- Inge Meysel
Inge Meysel (
May 30 ,1910 inRixdorf (nowBerlin -Neukölln );July 10 ,2004 inSeevetal nearHamburg ) was a German actress. From the early 1960s until her death, Meysel was one of Germany's most popular actresses. She had a successful stage career and played more than 100 roles in film and on television.Life and work
Born Ingeborg Charlotte Hansen as the daughter of the Danish mother Anna Hansen and the German
Jew Julius Meysel, she attended drama schools inBerlin from 1928 until 1930, thereafter she was on stage inZwickau ,Leipzig and Berlin.During
Nazi Germany Inge Meysel was banned from performing from 1935 until 1945 because of her Jewish father. In 1945 she restarted her career inHamburg .Since the early 1960s Inge Meysel mainly acted in made-for-TV films and got the nickname "(Fernseh-) Mutter der Nation" ("(Television) Mother of the Nation").
She won numerous German actor awards including a lifetime achievement award from the German Television Awards, but in 1981 she refused to accept the
Bundesverdienstkreuz because "Einen Orden dafür, daß man anständig gelebt hat, brauche ich nicht"("I don't need an order of merit just for having lived decently").From the mid-1920s until shortly before her death, Meysel was outspoken on many - often controversial - social and political issues. Despite her decidedly
leftist andfeminist views, this did not harm her popularity as an actress. In 1992, she came out as a bisexual. [cite web |url=http://www.faz.net/s/RubCD175863466D41BB9A6A93D460B81174/Doc~EF0E30FDE5A024A89BA83B1CE3815DAD3~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html |title=Ich war bisexuell, ich, die Mutter der Nation |language=German |date=2004-07-10 |accessdate=2007-06-10 |work=Faz.net]In 2004, aged 94, she died of heart failure at her home near Hamburg. She was cremated and her ashes were buried near her second husband the Austrian filmproducer
John F. Olden (1918–1965) at Ohlsdorf Main Cemetery, Hamburg.Footnotes
External links
*http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040710/en_afp/germany_theater_obit_040710213952
*imdb name|id=0583734
*http://sueddeutsche.de/panorama/artikel/39/35004/ -- German text
*http://www.rp-online.de/news/german/2000-0530/meysel.html -- older text from 2000 (German)
*http://www.emma.de/632252258296745.html // interview in German language (1987)
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