Veruschka Countess von Lehndorff

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Veruschka Countess von Lehndorff, 2011

Vera Anna Gottliebe Countess von Lehndorff (born May 14, 1939 in Königsberg ), called Veruschka , is a German actress , painter and photographer and a former model .

Life

Vera von Lehndorff was born into the East Prussian noble family Lehndorff . Her father, Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort , was executed in 1944 for participating in the July 20, 1944 conspiracy against Adolf Hitler ; her mother was sent to a labor camp . Vera and her two sisters Nona and Gabriele came to an SS children's home in the Borntal in Bad Sachsa for a few months .

After the war , she grew up with her mother and three sisters in refugee camps and in the care of friends. Due to the many changes of location, she attended various schools, including the Waldorf School in Hamborn Castle in 1952 . She began to study design, which she dropped out after two years to devote herself entirely to painting in Italy. In the 1960s, the tall von Lehndorff (1.90 m) was discovered as a photo model during a stay in Florence . She adopted the pseudonym Veruschka , marketed herself as a fictional character and became the first German “supermodel”.

Veruschka's film debut in Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film Blow Up (1966) remained her best-known appearance on the screen. Several roles in European productions followed, such as in Veruschka - Poesia di una donna (1971) by the fashion photographer Franco Rubartelli , who also became her first lover. In 1983 she appeared in the German documentary Vom Watching While Dying , which helped to raise public awareness of the fate of the Vietnamese boat people . She also played the leading role in Ulrike Ottinger's Dorian Gray in the tabloid mirror .

In 1971 she participated in the by Alice Schwarzer initiated media campaign " We had an abortion! ".

Vera von Lehndorff is also, in conceptual and executive collaboration with the artist (draftsman, sculptor, video artist and photographer) Holger Trülzsch, a pioneer of body painting as well as other stagings and artistic alienations of one's own body. Among other things, she played in Florian Fricke's film Be quiet, I know I am a bearded young prophet.

Today she works as a painter. 2004 for his work with turned Andy Warhol became known director Paul Morrissey about it a documentary (Veruschka - A Life For the Camera) .

Since June 2006, the Helmut Newton Foundation has shown the Veruschka Self-Portraits exhibition in the Berlin Museum of Photography . The self-portraits shown there were created in collaboration with the photographer Andreas Hubertus Ilse. Also in 2006, von Lehndorff made a cameo in the James Bond film Casino Royale . In 2007 she was seen in the ARD documentary Die Flucht der Frauen (Director: Christian Wagner ), in which she reported on her experiences on the run from East Prussia.

Most recently, von Lehndorff drew attention to herself at London Fashion Week in September 2010 when she appeared as a model for fashion designer Giles Deacon, among other things with the intention of drawing attention to the abuse of animals within the fashion industry. In the same year, Blixa Bargeld and Alva Noto used the picture Wall Street Spider - one of the Veruschka Self-Portraits - as the cover picture for their joint album Mimikry , on which Veruschka can also be heard in two pieces.

In 2010 the book Doppelleben: Heinrich und Gottliebe von Lehndorff in the resistance against Hitler and von Ribbentrop by Antje Vollmer about their parents was published. In 2011 Vera von Lehndorff published her autobiography .

See also

Autobiography

Web links

Commons : Veruschka Gräfin von Lehndorff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography, pp. 67, 68 ff
  2. ↑ Veruschka von Lehndorff on fashionmodeldirectory.com , accessed on June 9, 2015.
  3. ↑ "I believed for a long time that I only brought harm", in: Die Welt, November 13, 2011 [1]
  4. ^ Veruschka: Mein Leben , TV report in Kulturzeit from October 12, 2011
  5. ↑ Mannequin for self-defense. In: Tages-Anzeiger of October 27, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Lehndorff, Veruschka Countess of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Veruschka (pseudonym); Lehndorff, Vera Gottliebe Anna Countess von (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German model, artist, actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg