Lil Dagover

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Lil Dagover, photograph by Alexander Binder , 1919
Lil Dagover, photograph by Alexander Binder, 1927
Lil Dagover's grave site

Lil Dagover , actually Martha Seubert , (born September 30, 1887 in Madiun , Java ; † January 23, 1980 in Grünwald , near Munich ) was a German stage and film actress . She was one of the leading German silent film actresses and was involved in numerous film and television productions between 1916 and 1979.

Life

Lil Dagover was the legitimate daughter of a German forest professional named Seubert who worked in the Dutch East Indies . She was educated in Great Britain , France and Switzerland . After her mother died, she came to Germany when she was ten to live with relatives in Tübingen . She attended the school there. Later she went to Weimar . Her maiden name was Martha. Other first names like Marie, Antonia, Siegelinde and Lilitt sprang from her imagination. In 1913 she married the actor Fritz Daghofer and changed his last name to her stage name "Lil Dagover". In 1914 their daughter Eva was born. She came into contact with the film through her husband. In 1913 she had her first film appearance. Seven years later she divorced Daghofer.

Under her stage name she appeared in two films by Fritz Lang in 1919 . She was chosen by Robert Wiene for the female lead in Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari engaged. She then shot with Fritz Lang, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and others in artistically demanding silent films that shaped her image as a “noble lady”. In 1926 she married the producer Georg Witt . Since Lil Dagover, in addition to her film career in Berlin, also advanced to a respected theater actress and thus had language experience, the change from silent film to sound film did not mean a career break for the star of the 1920s, as it did for many other silent film stars. She played at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater or at the Salzburg Festival .

Even during the time of National Socialism , Dagover remained a celebrated UFA star, who was one of the best-known and most popular screen actors in German film from 1933 to 1944 with a total of 23 roles. Although the National Socialists courted her, she did not excel politically. In 1937 she was awarded the title of State Actress , and in 1944 she received the War Merit Cross for her service in the troop support and her appearances in front theaters . Even after the Second World War , she was seen in numerous films and received awards, such as the 1954 Federal Film Prize for the best female supporting role in Royal Highness . In 1962 she received the gold film tape for many years of outstanding work in German film. A great success for Dagover in 1961 was the Edgar Wallace film The Strange Countess , in which she played the title role. Lil Dagover appeared in films until the late 1970s.

Lil Dagover-Witt died in 1980 in her house on the Bavaria film site in the Geiselgasteig district of Grünwald . She and her husband Georg rest next to each other in the Grünwald forest cemetery .

Filmography (selection)

Honors

The Lil-Dagover-Ring in Grünwald was named after her, as well as the Lil-Dagover-Gasse in Berlin-Hellersdorf in 1995 .

Fonts

Autobiography

literature

  • Friedemann Beyer: The faces of UFA - star portraits of an era . Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05971-9 .

Web links

Commons : Lil Dagover  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography at the Murnau Foundation ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.murnau-stiftung.de
  2. ↑ Note in: Beyer: The faces of the UFA, p. 40.
  3. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Lil Dagover
  4. ↑ Lil-Dagover-Gasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Dagover, Lil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Seubert, Martha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actress
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Madioen , East Java, Dutch East Indies
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1980
Place of death Munich , Bavaria, Germany