Kristina Söderbaum

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Kristina Söderbaum (1937)

Beata Margareta Kristina Söderbaum (born September 5, 1912 in Stockholm , Sweden ; † February 12, 2001 in Hitzacker , Lower Saxony ) was a Swedish actress . She celebrated her greatest successes in German cinema at the time of National Socialism , when she also starred in Nazi propaganda films under the direction of her husband Veit Harlan (1899–1964) .

Life

Kristina Söderbaum was the daughter of chemistry professor and temporary chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum . She spent her school and boarding school in Stockholm, Paris and Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she followed a relative to Berlin in September 1934. There she attended lectures in art history, took acting lessons and learned German on the side.

Söderbaum got his first film role in a UFA youth competition in 1936. After the little-noticed debut, she was discovered in 1937 by Veit Harlan , in whose film Jugend she took the lead role in 1938. In 1939 she married Harlan; the marriage resulted in two sons, Kristian (* 1939, called Tian) and Caspar (* 1946).

Between 1939 and 1945 Söderbaum shot numerous popular hits with Harlan, including Blown Traces (1938), based on the radio play of the same name by Hans Rothe , Das immortliche Herz (1938), Die Reise nach Tilsit (1939), Die goldene Stadt (1942), Immensee ( 1943) and Sacrifice (1944).

Söderbaum was equally popular with the public and the National Socialist leadership, and in Nazi propaganda she corresponded to the ideal of the supposedly “ Aryan woman ”. She quickly rose to become a star in German cinema. Her death in the water at the end of two of her melodramatic films ( Jugend and Jud Süss ) earned her the nickname "Reichswasserleiche", which she has had throughout her life.

In Harlan's anti-Semitic agitation, Jud Suess (1940), she played one of the leading roles alongside Heinrich George , with whom she was also seen in the endurance film Kolberg (1945) shortly before the end of the war . Söderbaum appeared to the National Socialists to be more reliable than her compatriot Zarah Leander , who returned to neutral Sweden in 1943.

In February 1945 Söderbaum fled with her family from Berlin to Hamburg.

When her husband started directing again from 1950, Söderbaum again played numerous leading roles in his films. Among other things, The Blue Hour (1953), Two Hearts in May (1958) and I Will Carry You On Hands (1958), which should be the last joint film between the two of them. August Strindberg's Ein Traumspiel (1963), a theater production in Aachen, followed as the last project of the two.

In 1953 Söderbaum began working with Ilse Kubaschewski , in which Veit Harlan was also involved. The first joint production was the film Stars over Colombo (1953), in which Söderbaum played the leading role. The film was produced by Ilse Kubaschewski's production company Divina and loaned by Gloria Verleih, which was also founded and directed by Kuba, as Ilse Kubaschewski was also called. The next part was the film The Prisoner of the Maharajah (1954). Veit Harlan, Kristina Söderbaum and Ilse Kubaschewski also worked together again on the production of the film Verrat an Deutschland (1954).

After Harlan's death in April 1964, Söderbaum trained as a photographer in Munich . In 1974 she took on a role in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's film Karl May . In 1983 she published her autobiography Nothing always stays that way . In the following years Söderbaum appeared in three little-known films and in the television series Der Bergdoktor .

She died on February 12, 2001 at the age of 88 in a nursing home in Hitzacker, Lower Saxony . Her grave is in the cemetery in Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg .

Filmography

Kristina Söderbaum with her son Kristian. In: Wochenblatt Se 1941

Autobiography

  • Kristina Söderbaum: Nothing stays that way. Flashbacks to life in front of and behind the camera. Hestia, Bayreuth 1983, ISBN 3-7770-0260-7 (extended edition: Herbig, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7766-1748-9 ).

literature

Web links

Commons : Kristina Söderbaum  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kristina Söderbaum is dead. In: Spielfilm.de. February 24, 2001, accessed February 13, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Michael Kamp: Glanz und Gloria. The life of the grande dame of the German film Ilse Kubaschewski 1907-2001 . August Dreesbach Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-944334-58-5 , pp. 126 .
  3. ↑ Michael Kamp: Glanz und Gloria. The life of the grande dame of the German film Ilse Kubaschewski 1907-2001 . August Dreesbach Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-944334-58-5 , pp. 127 .
  4. ↑ Kristina Söderbaum died at 88. In: MOPO.de. February 14, 2001, accessed February 20, 2020 .
  5. ^ Grave of Kristina Söderbaum. In: Knerger.de. Retrieved February 13, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Söderbaum, Kristina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Söderbaum, Beata Margareta Kristina (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish actress
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockholm , Sweden
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 2001
Place of death Hitzacker , Lower Saxony , Federal Republic of Germany