Camilla Spira

Camilla Spira ( born March 1, 1906 in Hamburg, † August 25, 1997 in Berlin) was a German actress. She played in both silent films and talkies, as well as on stage. Camilla Spira is the daughter of actress Lotte Spira and the actor Fritz Spira, who was among the pioneers of the German silent cinema. She is the sister of actress DEFA Steffie Spira.

Life

Camilla Spira visited the Lyceum and then drama school founded by Max Reinhardt of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. She began her stage career, first in 1922 at the Wallner Theatre and at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin artists. Then she had an engagement in Vienna at the Theater in der Josefstadt and returned to Berlin, where she made her film debut in the 1924 silent film mother and son. There were other silent films and theater performances. 1925 to 1927 she performed at the Deutsches Theater. She then worked until 1930 at the Barnowsky stages. My greatest success was in 1930 in the musical comedy The white Horse Inn. In 1933 she appeared at the Volksbühne. Since she had a good voice, the conversion from silent to sound films worked for her career of more conducive. It was mostly occupied in the role of the squeaky clean, always good -humored German girls - for example, in the dawn, an epic poem on the German submariners, that shortly before the seizure of power by the National Socialists came to theaters in 1933.

The Nazis defamed as " half Jewish ", she received from the mid- 1930s, no other film offers. She slapped her more bad than good in the Jewish Cultural Association ago exclusively Jewish audience in Berlin through. After the Olympic Games in 1936, the conditions for Jews were getting worse. But because she was a "star" was, she succeeded with her husband, the lawyer and Deputy Director General of Engelhardt Brewery Hermann Eisner, and their two children in 1938 to emigrate to Amsterdam, where she however later adopted by the German occupiers and 1943 was admitted to the Westerbork transit camp.

In Westerbork Spira appeared in a meeting organized by Max Ehrlich cabaret program that would divert the remaining prisoners, when the day before transports had been to Auschwitz. Besides Honestly she stood among others with Willy roses on stage Westerbork camp and met with their well-known songs to an appreciative audience. Soon Spira and their children were, however, even shortly before being transported to Auschwitz. To prevent this, Spira asserted against the government lawyers Hans Georg Calmeyer not to be the daughter of the Jews Fritz Spira, but an Aryan lover of her mother, the Hungarian actor Y. Palfy. Such attempts to escape the threat of deportation, were quite common and often Calmeyer supported this, while working as an employee of the Dutch Reichskommissariat. After that he stopped for questioning on this issue a request to Reichssippenamt, Lotte Spira in Berlin. She signed in September 1943, a certificate which confirmed the statement of her daughter. The regularly cooperating with Calmeyer employees on Anthropological Institute in Kiel confirmed that Spira and severally and their children were mixed race, first degree. Calmeyer joined the advice and ended the Aryans examination finally on June 21, 1944 with a corresponding classification of the Spira family, which prevented their deportation. Since time was running out, he took Camilla Spira and their children personally from out of the camp Westerbork. By the end of the war, the family lived in Amsterdam.

In 1947 he and Camilla Spira back to Berlin. They settled in West Berlin, has been engaged at Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and at the Hebbel Theater, but also got some roles in the East German DEFA. Her film The Buntkarierten of 1949 is now one of the classics of DEFA. When she was encouraged to move to the eastern part if they wanted to await further engagements, she refused, unlike her sister Steffie Spira, this request from. She has had numerous engagements at West Berlin's theaters and participated in some famous films of the 1950s such as The Devil's General, sky without stars and roses for the prosecutor.

Camilla Spira was buried near her home in the forest cemetery Dahlem in Berlin at her husband's side.

Honors

Filmography (selection)