Beata Margareta Kristina Söderbaum (5 September 1912 – 12 February 2001) was a Swedish-born German film actress, producer, and photographer. She is most known for her roles in Nazi-era films.
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*Söderbaum in 1941
Born Beata Margareta Kristina Söderbaum, 5 September 1912, Stockholm, Sweden
Died 12 February 2001 (aged 88), Hitzacker, Germany
Occupation Actress
Spouse(s) Veit Harlan
(m. 1939; died 1964)
Children 2
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Beata Margareta Kristina Söderbaum (5 September 1912 – 12 February 2001) was a Swedish-born German film actress, producer, and photographer. She is most known for her roles in Nazi-era films.
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Söderbaum was born in Stockholm, Sweden; her father, Professor Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum (1862–1933), was the permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
After both her parents died shortly after one another, Söderbaum moved to Berlin and enrolled in a theatre school.
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According to film historian Antje Ascheid, Söderbaum is frequently identified as "most singularly representative of the Nazi ideal, as the quintessential Nazi star". As a beautiful Swedish blonde, Söderbaum had the baby-doll looks that epitomized the model Aryan woman. In fact, she had already played the role of the innocent Aryan in a number of feature films and was well-known to German audiences. Her youth and beauty made her a symbol of health and purity and thus an exemplary specimen of the Nazi ideal of womanhood.
In a number of her films, she had been imperiled by the threat of rassenschande ("racial pollution"). Two such roles were Dorothea Sturm, the doomed heroine of the antisemitic historical melodrama Jud Süß, who commits suicide by drowning after being raped by the villain and Anna in Die goldene Stadt, a Sudeten German whose desire for the city (in defiance of blood and soil) and whose seduction by a Czech result in her drowning suicide. As a result of her watery fate in these two films, as well as a similar end in her debut in Harlan's 1938 film Jugend, she was given the mock honorary title Reichswasserleiche ("Drowned Corpse of the Reich").
Other roles included Elske in Die Reise nach Tilsit, the wholesome German wife whose husband betrays her with a Polish woman, but finally returns, repentant; Elisabeth in Immensee, who marries a rich landowner to forget her unrequited love, and in the end decides to remain faithful even after she is widowed and her lover returns; Aels in Opfergang, a woman who dies after her love affair; Luise Treskow in The Great King, a miller's daughter who encourages Frederick the Great; and Maria in Kolberg, a peasant girl who loyally supports the resistance to Napoleon and is the only survivor of her family.
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In the first few years after the war, Söderbaum was often heckled off the stage and even had rotten vegetables thrown at her. In subsequent years, she frequently expressed regret for her roles in anti-semitic films.
After her husband was again permitted to direct films, Söderbaum played leading roles in a number of his films. These included Blue Hour (1952), The Prisoner of the Maharaja (1953), Betrayal of Germany (1954), and I Will Carry You on My Hands (1958). Their last joint project was a 1963 theater production of August Strindberg's A Dream Play in Aachen.
After Harlan's death in 1964, Söderbaum became a noted fashion photographer. In 1974 she took a role in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's film Karl May. In 1983 she published her memoirs under the title Nichts bleibt immer so ("Nothing Stays That Way Forever"). In her later years, Söderbaum faded into obscurity but still took roles in three movies and the television series The Bergdoktor. Her last film was with Hugh Grant in the thriller Night Train to Venice in 1994.
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Uncle Bräsig (1936) as Minning
Youth [it] (1938) as Ännchen
Covered Tracks (1938) as Séraphine Lawrence
The Immortal Heart (1939) as Ev Henlein
The Journey to Tilsit (1939) as Elske Settegast
*Jud Süß (1940) as Dorothea Sturm
The Great King (1942) as Luise Treskow
The Golden City (1942) as Anna Jobst
Immensee (1943)
Opfergang (1945) as Aels Flodéen
Kolberg (1944) as Maria
Immortal Beloved (1951) as Katharina von Hollstein
Hanna Amon (1951)
The Blue Hour (1953)
Stars Over Colombo (1953)
The Prisoner of the Maharaja (1954)
Verrat an Deutschland [de] (1954)
Two Hearts in May (1958)
I'll Carry You in My Arms (1958)
Die blonde Frau des Maharadscha (1962)
Karl May (1974)
Let's Go Crazy (1983)
Das bleibt das kommt nie wieder (1992)
Night Train to Venice (Train to Hell) (1993)
Der Bergdoktor: Series 1, Episode 11 "Der Sinn des Lebens" ("The Meaning of Life") (1993)
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Actress. Called the "Drowned Girl of the Reich" for her numerous onscreen suicides by drowning, she is remembered as a longtime star of the German cinema and as the blonde Aryian ideal of several of Dr. Joseph Goebbels' propoganda films from the Nazi era.
The child of a distinguished academic, she was raised in Stockholm but relocated to Berlin to study theatre following her parents' deaths in 1933.
Kristina made her silver screen debut in the 1933 "Hur behandlar du din hand?" then had a number of small roles before landing her big break as Annchen in Viet Harlan's 1938 drama "Youth". She was to achieve major stardom with Harlan's "Covered Tracks" (1938) and 1939 "The Trip to Tilst" then following her 1940 marriage to the director became a Nazi insider and a favourite of Dr. Goebbels.
Kristina's best known role was to be that of Dorothea Strumm, a German girl who kills herself in shame after she is raped by Oppenheimer, the stereotypical money-grubbing Jewish villain of the 1940 "Jud Sus", one of the all time classics of propoganda movies. Following the success of "Jud Sus" Kristina and Harlan collaborated on several made-for-Hitler films including "The Golden City" and "The Great King" (both 1942), 1943's "Immensee", and the 1945 "Kolberg".
After the war Kristina was charged with war crimes for the making of "Jud Sus" and was tried but acquitted. Harlan suffered a like fate and though found not guilty was banned from the film industry until the early 1950s, with Kristina refusing all acting jobs during her husband's term of punishment.
Kristina returned to the screen in 1951 and continued to star in Harlan's productions up thru 1962's "The Maharajah's Blonde"; leaving show business after her husband's 1964 death she built a second career as a respected Munich fashion and portrait photographer. Kristina made another comeback in 1976 with "Karl May" and continued occasional appearances on both the large and small screens before earning her final credit with 1994's "Night Train to Venice" then living out her days in northern Germany. Her biography entitled "Nothing Remains the Way It Is" was published in 1983; several of her movies have been preserved and are available on DVD.
Bio by: Bob Hufford
The End.
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Saturday, May 30, 2020.
Kristina Söderbaum - Actress.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Profile :
Born Beata Margareta Kristina Söderbaum, 5 September 1912, Stockholm, Sweden
Died 12 February 2001 (aged 88), Hitzacker, Germany
Occupation Actress
Spouse(s) Veit Harlan
(m. 1939; died 1964)
Children 2
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2. Introduction :
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3. Early life :
Söderbaum was born in Stockholm, Sweden; her father, Professor Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum (1862–1933), was the permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
After both her parents died shortly after one another, Söderbaum moved to Berlin and enrolled in a theatre school.
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4. Career :
Nazi era :
Beginning in 1935, Söderbaum starred in a number of films with director Veit Harlan, whom she married in 1939. Harlan and Söderbaum made ten films together for the then state-controlled film production company UFA until 1945.
According to film historian Antje Ascheid, Söderbaum is frequently identified as "most singularly representative of the Nazi ideal, as the quintessential Nazi star". As a beautiful Swedish blonde, Söderbaum had the baby-doll looks that epitomized the model Aryan woman. In fact, she had already played the role of the innocent Aryan in a number of feature films and was well-known to German audiences. Her youth and beauty made her a symbol of health and purity and thus an exemplary specimen of the Nazi ideal of womanhood.
In a number of her films, she had been imperiled by the threat of rassenschande ("racial pollution"). Two such roles were Dorothea Sturm, the doomed heroine of the antisemitic historical melodrama Jud Süß, who commits suicide by drowning after being raped by the villain and Anna in Die goldene Stadt, a Sudeten German whose desire for the city (in defiance of blood and soil) and whose seduction by a Czech result in her drowning suicide. As a result of her watery fate in these two films, as well as a similar end in her debut in Harlan's 1938 film Jugend, she was given the mock honorary title Reichswasserleiche ("Drowned Corpse of the Reich").
Other roles included Elske in Die Reise nach Tilsit, the wholesome German wife whose husband betrays her with a Polish woman, but finally returns, repentant; Elisabeth in Immensee, who marries a rich landowner to forget her unrequited love, and in the end decides to remain faithful even after she is widowed and her lover returns; Aels in Opfergang, a woman who dies after her love affair; Luise Treskow in The Great King, a miller's daughter who encourages Frederick the Great; and Maria in Kolberg, a peasant girl who loyally supports the resistance to Napoleon and is the only survivor of her family.
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5. Postwar :
In the first few years after the war, Söderbaum was often heckled off the stage and even had rotten vegetables thrown at her. In subsequent years, she frequently expressed regret for her roles in anti-semitic films.
After her husband was again permitted to direct films, Söderbaum played leading roles in a number of his films. These included Blue Hour (1952), The Prisoner of the Maharaja (1953), Betrayal of Germany (1954), and I Will Carry You on My Hands (1958). Their last joint project was a 1963 theater production of August Strindberg's A Dream Play in Aachen.
After Harlan's death in 1964, Söderbaum became a noted fashion photographer. In 1974 she took a role in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's film Karl May. In 1983 she published her memoirs under the title Nichts bleibt immer so ("Nothing Stays That Way Forever"). In her later years, Söderbaum faded into obscurity but still took roles in three movies and the television series The Bergdoktor. Her last film was with Hugh Grant in the thriller Night Train to Venice in 1994.
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* She died in 2001 in a nursing home in Hitzacker, Lower Saxony, Germany.
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6. Filmography :
Uncle Bräsig (1936) as Minning
Youth [it] (1938) as Ännchen
Covered Tracks (1938) as Séraphine Lawrence
The Immortal Heart (1939) as Ev Henlein
The Journey to Tilsit (1939) as Elske Settegast
The Great King (1942) as Luise Treskow
The Golden City (1942) as Anna Jobst
Immensee (1943)
Opfergang (1945) as Aels Flodéen
Kolberg (1944) as Maria
Immortal Beloved (1951) as Katharina von Hollstein
Hanna Amon (1951)
The Blue Hour (1953)
Stars Over Colombo (1953)
The Prisoner of the Maharaja (1954)
Verrat an Deutschland [de] (1954)
Two Hearts in May (1958)
I'll Carry You in My Arms (1958)
Die blonde Frau des Maharadscha (1962)
Karl May (1974)
Let's Go Crazy (1983)
Das bleibt das kommt nie wieder (1992)
Night Train to Venice (Train to Hell) (1993)
Der Bergdoktor: Series 1, Episode 11 "Der Sinn des Lebens" ("The Meaning of Life") (1993)
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7. Tribute :
Actress. Called the "Drowned Girl of the Reich" for her numerous onscreen suicides by drowning, she is remembered as a longtime star of the German cinema and as the blonde Aryian ideal of several of Dr. Joseph Goebbels' propoganda films from the Nazi era.
The child of a distinguished academic, she was raised in Stockholm but relocated to Berlin to study theatre following her parents' deaths in 1933.
 |
Kristina's best known role was to be that of Dorothea Strumm, a German girl who kills herself in shame after she is raped by Oppenheimer, the stereotypical money-grubbing Jewish villain of the 1940 "Jud Sus", one of the all time classics of propoganda movies. Following the success of "Jud Sus" Kristina and Harlan collaborated on several made-for-Hitler films including "The Golden City" and "The Great King" (both 1942), 1943's "Immensee", and the 1945 "Kolberg".
After the war Kristina was charged with war crimes for the making of "Jud Sus" and was tried but acquitted. Harlan suffered a like fate and though found not guilty was banned from the film industry until the early 1950s, with Kristina refusing all acting jobs during her husband's term of punishment.
Kristina returned to the screen in 1951 and continued to star in Harlan's productions up thru 1962's "The Maharajah's Blonde"; leaving show business after her husband's 1964 death she built a second career as a respected Munich fashion and portrait photographer. Kristina made another comeback in 1976 with "Karl May" and continued occasional appearances on both the large and small screens before earning her final credit with 1994's "Night Train to Venice" then living out her days in northern Germany. Her biography entitled "Nothing Remains the Way It Is" was published in 1983; several of her movies have been preserved and are available on DVD.
Bio by: Bob Hufford
The End.
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