Thea von Harbou

From MedBib.com - Medicine & Nature

Thea von Harbou
Born Thea Gabriele von Harbou
December 27, 1888(1888-12-27)
Tauperlitz, Germany
Died July 1, 1954 (aged 65)
Berlin, Germany
Occupation Actress/Author
Years active 1905–1954
Spouse(s) Rudolf Klein-Rogge (1914-1920)
Fritz Lang (1922-1933)

Thea Gabriele von Harbou (December 27, 1888 – July 1, 1954) was a German actress and author of Prussian aristocratic origin. She was born in Tauperlitz in the Kingdom of Bavaria.

Contents

Early work

In 1905, she published her first novel in the Deutsche Roman-Zeitung. However, she then started to work as an actress, beginning in 1906 in Düsseldorf, then moving to Weimar (1908), Chemnitz (1911) and Aachen (1913). In Aachen she met her first husband, the actor and director Rudolf Klein-Rogge, whom she married in 1914.

Writing and relationship with Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou in their Berlin flat, 1923 or 1924

In 1920, she wrote her first film script Das Indische Grabmal (The Indian Tomb, Mysteries of India), together with Fritz Lang. Fritz Lang became her second husband in 1922, and they collaborated in the following years, writing the screenplays for Metropolis and M together. They separated in October 1931 and divorced in 1933.

Fallout with Fritz Lang

In 1932, a year before Adolf Hitler came to power, she joined the National Socialist German Workers Party, which presumably led to the divorce from Lang, who left Germany in 1934 for Paris after his film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse had been banned by the Nazi government. Fritz Lang's mother, although religiously a convert to Catholicism, was of Jewish extraction (see The Religious Affiliation of Director Fritz Lang).

In 1934, she wrote a cinematic adaptation of Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Assumption of Hannele, which she also directed.[1]

Harbou wrote the script for Der Herrscher (1937), directed by Veit Harlan and starring Emil Jannings. The movie celebrates unconditional submission under absolute authority, eventually finding reward in total victory.

Post World War II

After the war she was detained by the British military government, and then did unskilled labor, such as cleaning up rubble from the bombing. After receiving a working permit she did some synchronizing of movies, but also continued to write scripts.

Death

She died in 1954, aged 65, in Berlin.

Scripts (selection)

References

  1. ^ Hanneles Himmelfahrt at the Internet Movie Database.

External links

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
All material adapted used from Wikipedia is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter?