Kristina Söderbaum

Kristina Söderbaum ( born September 5, 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden, † 12 February 2001 Hitzacker, Lower Saxony ) was a Swedish actress. Your greatest achievements came in the German cinema in the time of National Socialism, as they played under the direction of her husband Veit Harlan (1899-1964) in Nazi propaganda films.

Life

Kristina Söderbaum was the daughter of chemistry professor and chairman pro tempore of the Nobel Committee Henrik Gustaf Söder tree. She spent her school and boarding school in Stockholm, Paris and Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she was followed in September 1934 a relatives in Berlin. There she attended lectures in art history, took acting lessons learned and the way German.

Through a competition for young UFA Söderbaum came in 1936 to the first roll of film. After the little-noticed debut, she was discovered in 1937 by Veit Harlan, in his film Youth in 1938 they took over the lead role. In 1939, she married Harlan, the only director until his death, under which they worked. The marriage had two sons, Kristian ( b. 1939, called Tian ) and Caspar (* 1946).

Between 1939 and 1945 turned Söderbaum with Harlan large audience successes, including Verwehte tracks ( 1938), The Immortal Heart ( 1938), The Journey to Tilsit (1939 ), The Golden City (1942 ), Immensee (1943) and sacrifice (1944).

Söderbaum was equally popular with the public as in the Nazi leadership, the Nazi propaganda they corresponded to the ideal image of the supposedly "Aryan woman." She quickly rose to become a star of the German cinema. Her death in the water at the end of two of its melodramatic films ( Jud Suss, The Golden City) earned her the nickname " Empire corpse ", which she accompanied her whole life.

In Harlan's anti-Semitic Jud Suss Hetzwerk she played a starring role on the side of Henry George, with whom she was seen shortly before the war ended in the staying film Kolberg. The Nazis appeared Söderbaum reliable than her compatriot Zarah Leander, who returned in 1943 to neutral Sweden.

In February 1945 Söderbaum fled from Berlin with her family to Hamburg. Between 1945 and 1950 she struck in solidarity with Harlan, who had been a "crime against humanity " accused of his propaganda films and barred from conducting business, all film offers, but played in plays that staged Harlan anonymous.

When her husband in 1950 allowed to produce again, even Söderbaum numerous leading roles played again in his films. It developed also The Blue Hour (1952 ), The Prisoner of the Maharajah (1953), betrayal of Germany (1954) and I will carry you on their hands (1958 ), which should be the last joint film of the two. August Strindberg's A Dream Play (1963 ), a theater production in Aachen, followed as the last project of the two.

After Harlan's death in April 1964, Söderbaum was trained in Munich as a photographer. In 1974 she took on a role in Hans -Jürgen Syberberg film Karl May 1983, she published her memoirs under the title " Nothing is ever so ". In the aftermath Söderbaum yet entered into three little-known films and in the television series on The mountain doctor. In 2001, she died in a nursing home in northern Germany.

Filmography

Autobiography

• Kristina Söderbaum: Nothing is always so: Flashback for a life of and behind the camera. Hestia, Bayreuth 1983, ISBN 3-7770-0260-7