Maria Carmi
Maria Carmi (born March 3, 1880 in Florence as Eleonora Erna Gilli called Norina, † August 4, 1957 in Myrtle Beach) was an Italian actress of Swiss descent. First marriage (1904–1921) as Norina Vollmoeller with Karl Gustav Vollmoeller , between 1917 and 1921 a bigamistic second marriage to Prince Georges V. Matchabelli, with whom he was married as Princess Norina Matchabelli between 1921 and 1933. From Vollmoeller in 1921, divorced from Prince Matchabelli in 1933.
Life
Norina Gilli came as the youngest of five children of the master confectioner Luigi Gilli and his wife Emma Gilli, nee. Troll in Florence to the world. Luigi Gilli's great-grandfather had emigrated from Graubünden to Tuscany and founded the Gilli confectionery in the center of Florence in 1733.
Norina grew up in Florence and Fiesole , but spent the summer months in Samedan , Graubünden, where the family owned a house in the center of the village.After she became critically ill with tuberculosis in 1894, her parents first brought her to Samedan, from there to St. Moritz to a special clinic for lung patients.
Through the Züst brothers, emigrants from Switzerland and founders of the Züst Automobile factories, Norina met her husband Karl Gustav Vollmoeller in 1903 . In May 1904 the couple married in San Salvatore al Monte in Florence. Gabriele D'Annunzio was one of the best man. The young couple lived in Vollmoeller's villa in Sorrento on the Gulf of Naples , from 1906 in Turin and in the Villa Il Pozzino in Castello , which Vollmoeller had acquired for Norina. Here Rainer Maria Rilke was a guest of the Vollmoellers at Easter 1908. In the late summer of 1904 a scandal occurred in the Villa Arlotta when André Gide approached Vollmoeller as a homosexual, whereupon he angrily threw him out of the house. In the same year Arthur Schnitzler and his wife Olga visited Sorrento.
In 1906 Vollmoeller persuaded Norina to support him in his work on Pier Jacobo Martelli. Under Norina's pseudonym Maria Carmi , the book was published in 1906 by Bernardo Seeber Florence.
In autumn 1907 Norina traveled to Berlin, where she was a guest of Sabine Lepsius and her husband Reinhold Lepsius . The harsh Berlin climate caused Norina's lung disease to break out again. She went to a lung sanatorium in Davos, where she was treated for several months. In this respect, Norina was unable, as is often claimed, to take acting lessons from Max Reinhardt between 1907 and 1909 . This is also proven by Ernst Stern's statement in his memoirs: "That Frau Carmi came from Florence ... Although a dilettante , she embodied in an ideal way" [the Madonna]. Several passages in Rilke's correspondence with Mathilde Vollmoeller between 1907 and 1909 also confirm Norina's absence from Berlin.
On July 31, 1911 in Tutzing , on Lake Starnberg , there was a fateful encounter between Norina and Max Reinhardt. Vollmoeller was back from visiting Gustav Klimt in Unterach am Attersee to meet his wife and Max Reinhardt in Tutzing. When Norina approached the two men, Max Reinhardt is said to have said to Vollmoeller: "Here comes our Madonna". Norina Vollmoeller had to be persuaded, as a non-actress, to take on the role.
During and after the premiere of Vollmoeller's “The Miracle” in London's Olympia Hall on December 23, 1911, Norina became world-famous under her stage name Maria Carmi. The major English, US and German newspapers were full of praise for Maria Carmi's acting. After the participants of the Eucharistic World Congress in Vienna in 1912, in a special performance of Vollmoeller's “Miracle”, had convinced themselves of his Christian message and Norina's acting skills, Pope Pius X received Maria Carmi with husband Karl Vollmoeller in a private audience in the Vatican on June 28, 1914. In an interview with NYT, Maira Carmi said: “I was presented by the Prussian Embassy, but his Holiness at once recognized me as an Italian, saying: A German name, but Venetian eyes. And a Florentine nose, your Holiness, I replied, explaining that I was born in Tuscany. "
Before and during the First World War, she was a much sought-after diva of German and Italian silent films.
Due to the war-related absence of her husband, who worked on behalf of the cultural department of the German Foreign Ministry together with his friend Harry Graf Kessler in Switzerland, the couple grew apart. In 1916, in Berlin diplomatic circles, Maria Carmi met the Georgian Prince Georges V. Matchabelli. Despite her existing marriage to Vollmoeller, Carmi used a guest tour of the German Theater in May 1917 to Sweden to marry Prince Matchabelli in bigamy at the Stockholm registry office
After the end of the war in November 1918 and the divorce from Vollmoeller at the beginning of 1921, Maria Carmi returned to Italy. Avoided by Italian film without the protection of her ex-husband, Carmi worked for a short time as a theater actress in Italy. At the end of 1923 the Matchabellis moved to the USA, where they appeared again for several years in Vollmoeller's “The Miracle” on Broadway and at theaters in various major cities. Carmi, now Princess Norina Matchabelli, founded the Prince Matchabelli Perfume Company with her husband in 1924. In 1933, Prince Matchabelli filed for divorce because Norina had become a leading disciple of guru Meher Baba and co-founder of his American branches. How much Norina's personality changed under the influence of Meher Baba - in the sense of a brainwashing - describes the writer Mercedes de Acosta , a close friend of Norina, in her harrowing memories. De Acosta also describes how Norina tried to win Greta Garbo for his sect on behalf of her guru .
After Matchabelli's death in 1935, despite divorce, she inherited a multi-digit million sum that she gave to Meher Baba. Norina Matchabelli became Meher Baba's spokeswoman because he had taken a vow of silence and only communicated with his surroundings via a blackboard. Thanks to Norina's excellent contacts to the Hollywood film community, which she had through her ex-husband Karl Vollmoeller, she tried twice to have a film made about Meher Baba. Both times she managed to win Vollmoeller over to work on the script, but both projects, for which well-known artists were involved, failed because of Meher Baba's unrealistic ideas and objections. The copies of the scripts are in Vollmoeller's estate in the German Literature Archive in Marbach.
Although she was critically ill, Norina lived for many years in poor conditions in India, in her guru's ashram, until the progressive cancer made treatment necessary in the USA. Here, too, she campaigned intensively for the interests of her sect from her sickbed. Norina Matchabelli alias Maria Carmi died in 1957 in the faith center of the Baba sect in Myrtle Beach, which had recently been established.
Filmography
|
|
plant
- Maria Carmi: Pier Jacopo Martelli, Bernardo Seeber Verlag, Florence 1906
literature
- Frederik D. Tunnat: Karl Vollmoeller - Poet and Cultural Manager, A Biography, 2008
- Frederik D. Tunnat: Karl Vollmoeller - A life under the sign of the miracle, 2011
- Frederik D. Tunnat: Maria Carmi - Europe's first film and theater diva, Edition Vendramin 2015
- Ernst Stern: set designer for Max Reinhardt, Henschel Vlg. Berlin, 1955
- Johannes von Günther: A life in the east wind. Between Petersburg and Munich, Biederstein Verlag, Munich 1969
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Mathilde Vollmoeller: Paris is necessary. Correspondence., Edited by Barbara Glauert-Hesse, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001
- Sabine Lebsius: An artist's life in Berlin at the turn of the century: memories. Munich: Georg Müller Verlag, 1972
- Ursula von Mangoldt: On the threshold between yesterday and tomorrow. Encounters and experiences Barth, 1963
- Hedda Eulenberg: In the double happiness of art and life, 1952
- Graubünden calendar. 2010, pp. 81-86
Movie
- “The Princess of Samedan” by Claudia Knapp, documentary, CH 2016, 25 minutes
Web links
- Maria Carmi in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Maria Carmi at filmportal.de
- Maria Carmi and Karl Vollmoeller ( Memento from January 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Portrait photography in the UK's National Portrait Gallery
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frederik D. Tunnat: Maria Carmi - Europe's first film and theater diva, Edition Vendramin, Berlin 2015, p. 21
- ↑ https://caffegilli.com/en/history/
- ↑ Maria Carmi biography p. 22
- ↑ Maria Carmi Bio p. 23
- ↑ Maria Carmi Bio p. 25
- ↑ Karl Vollmoeller's estate, DLA Marbach, Vollmoeller's letter, autumn 1942
- ↑ Maria Carmi Bio, pp. 34/35
- ↑ Karl Vollmoeller's estate, DLA Marbach, Vollmoeller's letter, autumn 1942
- ^ Rainer Maria Rilke, Mathilde Vollmoeller: Paris tut not Briefwechsel, Göttingen 2001, pp. 12-15f
- ↑ Ruth Landshoff-Yorck: Klatsch, Ruhm und kleine Feuer, Kiepenheuer & Witsch memories, Cologne-Berlin, 1963, p. 80
- ^ Postcard with thanks and letters from Arthur Schnitzler in the estate of Karl Vollmoeller DLA Marbach
- ^ Maria Carmi: Pier Jacopo Martelli, Bernardo Seeber, Florence 1906
- ↑ Sabine Lepsius: Stefan George: History of a friendship. Berlin: Verlag Die Runde, 1935 and Sabine Lebsius: A Berlin artist's life at the turn of the century: memories. Munich: Georg Müller Verlag, 1972, pp. 207,225
- ^ Frederik D. Tunnat: Maria Carmi biography
- ↑ Ernst Stern: stage designer with Max Reinhardt, Henschel Vlg. Berlin, 1955, p. 61
- ^ Rainer Maria Rilke, Mathilde Vollmoeller: Paris is necessary. Correspondence
- ↑ Vollmoeller's written note in the estate of Karl Vollmoeller DLA Marbach
- ↑ See letters between July 30, 1911 to Heymel to August 29, 1911 to Hanns von Gumppenberg in the Karl Vollmoeller DLA Marbach estate
- ↑ See e.g. B. New York Times v. January 14, 1912, Berliner Tageblatt April 30, 1914
- ^ New York Times v. July 11, 1912
- ↑ Vollmoellers publisher Johannes von Günther reports on it in his memoirs: A life in the east wind
- ↑ Frederik D. Tunnat: Maria Carmi biography p. 171–179, as well as marriage certificate archive registry office Stockholm
- ↑ see correspondence between Vollmoeller and his brother-in-law W. Knoll in his DLA Marbach estate
- ↑ See naturalization applications from Norina and Georges Matchabelli, Archives of the City of New York, Registry Office (with confirmation of the marriage in Stockholm in 1917)
- ^ Mercedes de Acosta, Here Lies the Heart. New York, 1960
- ↑ The Times 1936, detailed article on Matchabelli's legacy, as Stalin tried to claim it for the Soviet Union
- ↑ http://www.samedan.ch/public/upload/assets/1793/10_2016.pdf
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Carmi, Maria |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gilli, Norina |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian actress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 3, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Florence |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th August 1957 |
| Place of death | Myrtle Beach |