Marija Leiko

Marija Leiko

Marija Leiko (also known as Marija Leyko or Maria Leyko ; born August 14, 1887 in Riga , † February 3, 1938 in Moscow ) was a Latvian theater and film actress.

Life

With her partner, the actor and later director Johannes Guter and their daughter Nora, who was born in 1908, she fled tsarist Russia to Western Europe in 1909 because she was suspected of Trotskyism . In Vienna she received a grant from the Burgtheater ; She started her first engagement as an actress in 1911 at the New Theater in Frankfurt am Main . Later she played in Leipzig and again in Frankfurt. Since 1917 she lived in Berlin and acted on the Reinhardt theaters . Guest performances took her to Munich , among other places , where she appeared in Heinrich Mann's play Madame Legros . In 1920 she performed in her hometown of Riga. Her theater roles included the title character Nora and Ophelia in Hamlet .

She made her film debut at the age of thirty in the crime thriller Die Diamantenstiftung , directed by Guters. She gained fame as a dancer and leading actress in the German films Kain (1918), Ewiger Strom (1919), The Woman in the Cage (1919) and above all Lola Montez (1919). In the 1920s it faded more and more into the background. With the end of the silent film era , she withdrew from film and devoted herself to the theater.

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Leiko lived again in Riga, where in 1934 her 'Napoleon drama in 5 acts and an epilogue', Marija Vaļevska ( Maria Walewska ), was published by A. Gulbis, written together with Austra Oziliņa . After the death of her daughter in 1935, Marija Leiko traveled to Tbilisi to fetch her granddaughter. On the way back she was persuaded by friends in Moscow to give a guest performance at the Moscow Latvian theater "Skatuve" (The Stage) for a few seasons. She was arrested there during the Great Terror and shot by the NKVD in 1938 ; she had been accused of belonging to a counter-revolutionary nationalist Latvian fascist organization . In 1957 her rehabilitation took place.

Filmography

1917: The Diamond Foundation 1918: The spring song 1918: Cain (four parts) 1918: The von Zaarden brothers 1919: Lola Montez 1919: The woman in the cage 1919: Free love 1919: Satanas 1919: Eternal power 1920: The Kwannon from Okadera 1921: The red redoubt 1921: fire 1921: At the loom of time 1921: The victim of Ellen Larsen

1921: The fear of women 1921: The woman of tomorrow 1921: The rats 1921: Children of Darkness (2 parts) 1922: Sunken Worlds 1922: The tailoring skill 1923: Gesine Jakobsen's treasure 1923: The Woman King 1924: Dr. Wislizenus 1925: ascent of little Lilian 1928: Rothausgasse 1928: The band of robbers 1928: There is a linden tree at Rüdesheim Castle

literature

• Rudolf Adrian Dietrich: Four lithographs for Marija Leiko (= graphic series. Folder 13). With a foreword by the poet. Dresdner Verlag, Dresden 1922
• Marija Leiko: Mans atmiņu dārzs ( My Garden of Memory , Memoirs). Published in the daily newspaper Jaunākās ziņas. Riga, April 27 - May 18, 1929 and February 7 - March 14, 1931
• Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. Acabus-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 302 f.
• Guna Zeltiņa, Anita Uzulniece: Marija Leiko. Liesma, Riga 1989, ISBN 5-410-00276-8 (Latvian)
• Anita Uzulniece: Marija Leiko. Spēlēt - dzīvot! (Article in the quarterly Kino Raksti , Latvian)

Web links

• Marija Leiko in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Marija Leiko at filmportal.de
• Biography on Kino-Theater.ru
• Photos at the Latvian Academic Library