Hannelore Elsner: The career of Germany's last diva
Hannelore Elsner is dead. The actress died on Easter Sunday at the age of 76 years after a surprisingly serious illness, like the lawyer of the family. Matthias Prinz, the news agency spot on news confirmed on Tuesday. She was named the last diva of Germany among others. In interviews she was considered difficult among journalists. "If she does not like something, she says that directly, but mostly friendly", her son Hannelore Elsner once described in a double interview with the "Bild" newspaper.
If you read or listen to old interviews with the actress, you realize: She always spoke wisely. Listened carefully to each question, trying to give the interviewer the right answer. If she did not understand a question, she let her know that. Did she find a question too superficial, too stupid, too. Hannelore Elsner could afford that, because her career in German film and television was impressive.
Your discovery
At the age of 16 she was discovered by a Turkish director while she was walking along the street with her mother. Although the planned film was nothing despite a flight to Istanbul, but followed by an acting education in Munich, which laid the foundation for Hannelore Elsner career so to speak. After her first theatrical engagements, Elsner made her film debut at the age of 17 in "Freddy under Strange Stars" (1959). 1963 followed the role of destitute actress Sylvia Stössi in the film drama "The endless night" by director Will Tremper (1928-1998).
This was followed by countless roles in TV and film productions. From 1983 to 1997, she appeared in a total of seven "crime scene" Crime - the most famous is probably her portrayal of Peggy Karoly in the "crime scene: Peggy is afraid" (1983). From 1994, she spent 66 episodes as "The Commissioner" Lea Sommer in the Evening Program of the First. Her great successes include the films "The Untouchables", "My Last Movie" or "Hanami - Cherry Blossoms". She received the Federal Cross of Merit, the German Film Award and the Honorary Prize of the Bavarian Film Prize for her life's work.
"The film roles find me"
Her Bavarian grandmother had taught her as a child to take life as it comes, Hannelore Elsner said, as part of her 2011 autobiography "Im Überschwang" in the NDR talk show "DAS!" was a guest. This principle seemed to have transferred the actress to her profession. A movie role teaches me something, it is a great inner activity, so the search begins in oneself for sensations or parallels, knowledge, experiences that one can then use, "she explained in an interview with the" Frankfurter general ".
That you are powerless against the game of life, Hannelore Elsner had to learn early. Her brother Manfred was killed at the end of the war in March 1945 in a low-flying attack. Her father died of tuberculosis when she was eight years old. Her mother was a stranger to her. "Just before she died, there was a moment when we had arranged to talk to each other, it did not come to anything, the day we wanted to meet, she suddenly died of heart failure at the age of 59," she told "Süddeutsche Zeitung".
To her son Dominik - from the relationship with director Dieter Wedel (77) - she maintained a close relationship. Her only child was born on April 18, 1981, three months early. Twice the grandee was married altogether. Her first marriage with actor and voice actor Gerd Vespermann (1926-2000) lasted two years, the second marriage with the dramaturge Uwe Carstensen (63) lasted from 1993 to 2000.
