Steffie Spira
Steffie Spira (also: Steffie Spira - Ruschin, born June 2, 1908 in Vienna, † 10 May 1995 in Berlin ) was an actress. She coined as a folk theater actress socialist culture in the GDR crucial. Spira played among others in plays by Bertolt Brecht, Gerhart Hauptmann and Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol and worked in film and television.
Biography
Steffie Spira is the daughter of actor couple Lotte and Fritz Spira. In 1924 she attended a drama school and in 1925 received her first engagement. In 1926 she worked at the union of the actors. From 1928 played Spira at the Berliner Volksbühne. In 1931 she joined the Communist Party and became a co-founder of the theater troupe in 1931. She was married since 1931 with the director Günter Ruschin. In 1933 she emigrated to Switzerland. In 14 years of exile was theater work in Paris and the cabaret " The Lantern" and Brecht premieres. After separating from her husband, she was imprisoned in the prison of La Roquette and the women's camp, Camp de Rieucros, from where was the flight of the family to Mexico. There they committed themselves, inter alia, at the Heinrich -Heine- club.
In 1947, she returned to a Soviet freighter to Germany and played in 1948 at the Deutsches Theater under Wolfgang Langhoff, mainly at the Volksbühne in many major roles (eg, the mother Wolffen in " The Beaver Coat " by Gerhart Hauptmann ) and the theater Schiffbauerdamm. In the first film, Ernst Thalmann Ernst Thalmann - son's class (1954, directed by Kurt Maetzig ), which reflects the official view of history SED shortly before the de-Stalinization, she plays the Clara Zetkin.
On November 4, 1989, she stopped at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin during the Alexanderplatz demonstration, a speech to about half a million people and spoke out against the arrogance of power and for the freedom of their descendants: "I wish for my great-grandchildren that they grow up no roll call, no civics and that no blue shirts with torches to the high people! "
Her son Thomas Ruschin works as a dubbing director. Her sister Camilla Spira was also an actress.
Steffie Spira's tomb is located at the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin.