Iwa Raffay

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Iwa Raffay , nee Johanna Franzisca Lothka , also Johanna Franzisca Falkenberg and Johanna Franzisca Skorpil , (born April 6, 1881 in Prague , Austria-Hungary , † after 1943 ) was an Austrian actress , director , film producer and screenwriter .

Life

Iwa Raffay was born as Johanna Franzisca Lothka as the daughter of the master baker Alois Lothka and his wife Henriette, née Brabec. Her schooling took place at the Jenny Kirschbaum boarding school (later Beneschowsky), where she received a Franco-German education.

She married Josef Skorpil, from whom she divorced in 1906. From 1908 to 1909 she studied art, cultural studies and literature in Prague, London and Munich . After completing her studies, she decided to become an actress and was trained as a stage actor by Fritz Basil from the Munich Court Theater. In 1910 she moved to Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in Berlin . In addition, she took private acting lessons from Eduard von Winterstein .

From Berlin she went to the Hoftheater Darmstadt and then moved to Louise Dumont at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus . Since she did not like acting, she resumed her art history studies and at the same time began to work as a writer.

Before the First World War, she made her first contact with film. In 1913 her book "Die Berliner Range" was filmed by Max Mack and Vitascope. Her authorship was not mentioned. She then returned to the stage temporarily and went on tour through Switzerland around 1917 with Reinhardt's production "Orestie" . In the war winter of 1917, malnourished and completely exhausted, she was admitted to the St. Norbert Hospital in Berlin-Schöneberg .

At the end of the war in 1918 she began to write scripts for Union-Film, Deulig-Film and Bioscop. In the same year she directed Nur ein Butterfly for the first time . In the same year she founded her own production company, the Iwa Raffay-Film-Gesellschaft , for which she directed and wrote the script for nine films. Her penultimate directorial work " The Shepherd of Maria Schnee " from 1919 was a box office success in the USA in 1922 .

Since the 1930s, Iwa Raffay got more and more economic difficulties; she wrote texts for publications and radio. An application made by her for financial support from the Goebbels -Stiftung Künstlerdank was refused in 1939, as she was reviled by the brown rulers as a typical representative of the so-called system time, the Weimar Republic . In 1943 her application to travel to Prague and Vienna with her secretary was given on the grounds: "... that Ms. Raffay makes a lot of wind and is only trying to get away from Berlin, which is getting on her nerves because of the air raids" rejected by the Reichsschrifttumskammer .

Iwa Raffay wrote the screenplay for the film "The Black Robe" in the same year. The film was banned by the Allied military government in Germany after the end of the war. The time and place of death of Iwa Raffay are currently not known, but she probably did not die before April 1945 (end of the records in the culture chamber files of the Third Reich).

Filmography (selection)

as a director, unless otherwise stated

  • 1913: The Berlin Range
  • 1918: a thousand and one women. From a bachelor's diary
  • 1918: Don't cry, mother
  • 1918: Just a butterfly
  • 1919: The eyes of Jade
  • 1920: Maria Schnee's shepherd
  • 1922: Blind happiness
  • 1943: The Two Sisters (screenplay)
  • 1943: The Black Robe (screenplay)

literature

  • Movie star. Richter's Handbook of Actors, Directors and Writers of Film. Vol. 4, 1921/1922, ZDB -ID 1342234-0 , p. 84 f.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Raffay, Iwa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lothka, Johanna Franzisca (maiden name); Falkenberg, Johanna Franzisca; Scorpil, Johanna Franzisca
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian actress, director, film producer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH after 1943