HOME INDEX
GERMAN MOVIE
THE GERMAN
MOVIE
MAIL English Version

 
Ida Orloff


Foto: Aura Hertwig (1861-1944)

1889 - 1945

.
.
The actress Ida Orloff was born as Ida Margaretha Weissbeck in St. Petersburg.

Her mother married in second marriage Georg Siegler, Edler von Eberswald after Ida's father has died when she was four years old. They went to Austria where Ida grew up.
There she got acting lessons at a theater school before she entered the stage in 1905.
One year later she met the writer Gerhart Hauptmann and she enters a serious relationship with him at the age of 16 and she became his muse.

She continued her theater career successfuly and she got engagements at the Lessing theater and at the Burgtheater in Vienna.

She got her first film engagement in 1913 and she appeared in the Danish production "Atlantis" (13) with Olaf Fönss, Ebba Thomsen, Torben Meyer, Carl Lauritzen and Mihaly Kertesz who later became the famous movie director Michael Curtis.
The Burgtheater was not enthusiastic about her engagement in the still frowned upon film business but Ida Orloff reacted with a public critic against the Burgtheater. This led to her dismissal.

She concentrated to her stage career agian and she earned additional money by giving acting lessons and by translating Russian literature.

She only appeared one more time in front of the camera for the movie "Baccarat" (19) at the side of Blandine Ebinger, Ludwig Hartau, Frida Richard, Reinhold Schünzel and Molly Wessely.

In the 20s she was also engaged as a radio speaker for audio dramas where she remained active for many years.

With the rise of the National Socialist Ida Orloff emigrated with he second husband to Italy and later to England because her husband was no longer safe in Italy too. But finally she left her husband and their son and went back to Berlin to continue her stage career.

When World War II came to an end and the combat operations came to Vienna she committed suicide because she was afraid of a rape by the occupants.

 
Back