Gisela Uhlen

Gisela Uhlen ( born May 16, 1919 in Leipzig, † January 16, 2007 in Cologne; actually Gisela Friedlinde fright) was a German actress, dancer and author. She embodied since 1936, about 60 films and more than 100 stage roles.

Life and work

The actress was born as the fourth child of the opera singer Augustin Schreck and his wife Luise Frieda in 1919 in Leipzig. Even as a five year old, she attended the Mary Wigman Dance school for modern expressive dance at the Leipzig Conservatory. Later she learned yet classical ballet and acrobatics as she decided at 15 years for the profession of actress. As pseudonym she chose Gisela Uhlen.

After she had completed her acting training at Lilly Ackermann in Berlin, she made her debut in 1936 in the UFA film Anne Marie, where she played the main role. She had with her first films huge success and quickly became very popular. In the same year, she also debuted at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, where she received a commitment under the director Saladin Schmitt. Two years later, Heinrich George brought the actress to the Berlin Schiller Theater. During the period of Nazi dictatorship Gisela Uhlen also appeared several times in Nazi propaganda films.

After the Second World War, she first played mainly theater. In 1949 she staged with her third husband, the director Hans Bertram, the film drama A Very Long Engagement, where she not only took over the lead female role, but who also worked on the script. Nevertheless, the film fell through the audience as well as with the critics alike. From the marriage with their daughter Barbara Bertram Bertram comes (* 1945). Later, Uhlen allowed by Hans Bertram divorced and married in 1953 in fourth marriage to actor Wolfgang Kieling. On January 17, 1955 her second daughter Susanne Uhlen was born. Both daughters are also actresses. Due to a legal dispute with Bertram for custody of their daughter Barbara, she fled via Switzerland, where she performed at the Stadttheater Basel and at the Schauspielhaus in Zurich, on 22 April 1954 after East Berlin. Here they played at the Deutsches Theater, by the way, she was a movie star at DEFA. In 1957 she separated from Kieling and married in fifth husband, the DEFA - director Herbert Ballmann, in whose film productions she appeared several times. 1960 Uhlen returned to the Federal Republic, where she was obliged Boleslaw Barlog at the Schiller Theater. In the 1960s, she starred in three films with Edgar Wallace, 1979 occupied Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Than mother in The Marriage of Maria Braun For this role, she received a 1979 German Film Award in Gold.

At the beginning of the 1980s, she founded the " traveling theater Gisela Uhlen " where she acted ghosts, among other things with her daughter Susanne in drama. Late popularity reached by the success of the television series House Sokolov forest in the early 1990s. She was also a regular guest in crime series such as Derrick. End of 2005, they handed the Filmmuseum Potsdam part of their private collection of photographs, newspaper articles and film accessories.

Gisela Uhlen was married six times. Your sixth marriage ended in divorce in 1985.

Your memoirs she held in three books. After a long illness, Gisela Uhlen died on 16 January 2007 in Cologne from lung cancer. She was buried on the Melaten cemetery in Cologne.

Gisela Uhlen

Life and work

Filmography (selection)

Theater roles

Writings