German postcard by Ross-Verlag, Berlin, no. 9103/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Maxim-Film.

Hilde von Stolz (1903-1973) was a blonde Austrian leading lady and supporting actress in Ufa films of the 1930s and 1940s.

Hilde von Stolz was born in 1903 in Schäßburg/Segesvár, Hungary, Austria-Hungary, now Sighisoara, Romania. She was the daughter of an officer. Hilde was trained for acting at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna and began her career at the Viennese Kammerspiele. She subsequently performed at various theatres in Vienna and at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. Her film debut was in the silent film Der Schulmeister vom Lichtenthal (1928) under the pseudonym "Helen Steels". That same year, she moved to Berlin. In her second film role, she played the lead role opposite Reinhold Schünzel in the comedy Don Juan in der Mädchenschule/Don Juan in a Girls' School (Reinhold Schünzel, 1928). She used the pseudonym Helen Steels till 1933. At the Ufa, she established herself as a major film actress although she had to be satisfied with major supporting roles in well-known films such as Zu neuen Ufern/To New Shores (Detlef Sierck, 1937) with Zarah Leander and Kleiner Mann - ganz gross! (1938). She was often cast as ingénues, femmes fatales, elegant ladies, dancers or actresses.

Hilde von Stolz followed the political events in Germany critically and finally helped Jews to leave Germany. When she decided to leave Germany herself the outbreak of World War II nullified her plans and she had to stay in Germany. She continued her career during wartime and appeared among others as the wife of Duke Karl Alexander in the controversial propaganda film Jud Süss/Süss, the Jew (Veit Harlan, 1940) but also in films like the biopic Diesel (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1942) starring Willy Birgel and Münchhausen (Josef von Báky, 1942) starring Hans Albers. Diesel portrays the life of Rudolf Diesel, the German inventor of the diesel engine. It was one of a series of prestigious biopics made in Nazi Germany portraying genius inventors or artists struggling against the societies in which they live. After the war, she only appeared in a few more films. Her last films include the melodrama Ehe im Schatten/Marriage in the Shadows (Kurt Maetzig, 1947) released by DEFA, the comedy Charleys Tante/Charley's Aunt (Hans Quest, 1955) with Heinz Rühmann and Die Trapp-Familie/The Trapp Family (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1956) starring Ruth Leuwerik. Die Trapp-Familie became one of the most successful German films of the 1950s and was the inspiration for the even more fictionalised Broadway musical 'The Sound of Music' (1959), and its highly successful 1965 film version. Her final screen appearance was in the TV movie Ein Mann Gottes (Oswald Döpke, 1967). Hilde von Stolz died in 1973 in West Berlin, West Germany. She was buried in the family vault.

Sources: Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.

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German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 656/3. Photo: Maxim Film. Henny Porten in Struensee/Der Liebe einer Königin (Ludwig Wolff 1923).

Sturdy and blond Henny Porten (1890-1960) was one of Germany's most important and popular film actresses of the silent cinema. She became the quintessence of German womanhood, ladylike yet kindhearted and a not a little petit bourgeois. She was also the producer of many of her own films.

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Postcard from Croatia (former Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Pan Film, Zagreb. Ed. Caklovic, Zagreb, No. 103. Lee Parry and Alphons Fryland in Fedora (Jean Manoussi, Maxim-Film 1926), distributed by Filmhaus Bruckmann.

Lee Parry (1901-1977) was a glamorous German film actress of the silent and the early sound era. She often starred in films by her husband Richard Eichberg. She appeared in 48 films between 1919 and 1939.
Austrian film actor Alphons Fryland aka Alfons Fryland (1888-1953) appeared in 47 films between 1921 and 1933.

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German postcard by Verlag Ross, Berlin, no. 632/4. Photo: Maxim Film. Walter Janssen and Ria Jende in Der Tänzer (Carl Froehlich, 1919), based on the novel by Felix Holländer.

Andreas Rellnow (Walter Janssen) is the son of a highly nervous professor, whom he never felt loved by, and an aging dancer. Tired of the joyless parental home, one day Andreas decides to move out into the wide world and pursue an artist career. As a violin virtuoso, he quickly becomes a popular and a first-class heartbreaker. The women throw themselves at Andreas's feet, but he doesn't know how to give love and instead carelessly bends the hearts of his countless admirers.

Don Juan falls into disaster for many of them: Lucie Trenkwitz, the daughter of a respected consul, becomes his first victim (Gertrud Welcker). The next woman who does not find her love returned is Angela von Seydlitz (Irmgard Bern) and is the daughter of a chamberlain. Maria Friesländer (Margarete Kupfer), the wife of a helmsman, is hardly doing any better, and finally the dancer Lisa Lerder follows. But this is the end point for Andreas, because Lisa's partner William puts a cruel end to the careless activity of the heartbreaker and stabs Rellnow. NB it is unclear who played the parts of Lisa and William. Neither is it clear which part Ria Jende played. Lil Dagover played Rellnow's mother.

The film was in two episodes. Froehlich scripted the film with Georg Tatzelt. Sets were by Hans Sohnle, cinematography by Otto Tober. Der Tänzer was Janssen's second film after Die entschleierte Maja (1917).

German-Belgian actress Ria Jende (1898-? [after 1927]) was a star and producer of the silent German cinema. She appeared in 40 films, before she married and retired.
Walter Janssen (1887-1976), originally Walter Philipp Janßen, was a German stage and screen actor and film director. Between the late 1910s and the late 1950s, Walter Janssen had a very prolific acting career in German cinema.

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German postcard. Ross Verlag, Berlin, No. 695/1. Maxim Film. Henny Porten and Friedrich Kayssler in Gräfin Donelli/ Countess Donelli (G.W. Pabst, 1924).

Plot: Countess Mathilde Donelli (Porten) has become a widow early on, as her unfaithful husband killed himself. Now she is in material need. Her uncle, the much older Count Bergheim (Friedrich Kayssler), shows interest in Mathilde, but she is much more interested in Bergheim's handsome secretary Hellwig (Eberhard Leithoff). To help Mathilde, Hellwig sends Countess Donelli a larger sum of money. Thereupon the countess's uncle accuses his secretary of the theft because he wants to crush the young happiness. Graf Bergheim is prepared to waive a criminal complaint should Hellwig stay away from Mathilde from now on. Countess Donelli then lets himself be carried out to an act of desperation and shoots him down. The doctors can save the wounded man. Countess Donelli marries her great love after his recovery. Years later, Count Bergheim realizes that he would never had a chance with Mathilde and admits that he staged the embezzlement. Now Hellwig is finally rehabilitated.

Gräfin Donelli was a rather conventional melodrama, an early work of famous film director Pabst. On the sets the director met people he would work more often with: Henny Porten, cinematographer Guido Seeber and assistant-director Mark Sorkin. Herman Warm designed the sets. Gräfin Donelli passed censorship on 28 August 1924 dand premiered on 7 November 1924 at the Primus-Palast in Berlin.

Source: German Wikipedia, IMDB.

Sturdy and blond Henny Porten (1890-1960) was one of Germany's most important and popular film actresses of silent cinema. She became the quintessence of German womanhood, ladylike yet kindhearted and a not a little petit bourgeois. She was also the producer of many of her own films.

Friedrich Kayßler (1874-1945) was a German theatre and film actor, writer and composer. He appeared in 56 films between 1913 and 1945.

Kayßler was born in Neurode in the Prussian Silesia Province (now Nowa Ruda in Poland). He attended the gymnasium in Breslau (Wrocław), where he became a close friend of Christian Morgenstern and Fritz Beblo. Graduating in 1893 Kayßler studied philosophy at the universities of Breslau and Munich and began his theatre career at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin under manager Otto Brahm, later working at municipal theatres in Görlitz and Halle. At the Deutsches Theater, Kayßler had made friends with director Max Reinhardt, whose Schall und Rauch Kabarett ensemble in Berlin he joined in 1901. He followed Reinhardt, when he became manager of the Deutsches Theater in 1905, where Kayßler performed in Kleist's The Prince of Homburg, Goethe's Faust and Ibsen's Peer Gynt. He also succeeded Reinhardt as manager of the Berlin Volksbühne from 1918 until 1923. Kayssler also wrote several poems and dramas. In 1934 he starred alongside Veit Harlan in the Berlin premiere of Eugen Ortner's Meier Helmbrecht at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus.

In 1913 Kayssler first appeared as a film actor in the silent movie Welche sterben, wenn sie lieben by Carl Schönfeld. As the ambitious tunnel building engineer Max Allan he was the star of Der Tunnel (William Wauer 1915), based on Bernhard Kellermann's classic novel. Opposite Henny Porten he acted in various films in the 1920s: Die Liebe einer Königin (1923), Mutter und Kind (1924), Gräfin Donelli 1924), and later on, Luise, Königin von Preußen (Carl Froehlich, 1931) and 24 Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau (Robert Land, 1931), while also acting in silent films with female stars such as Maria Corda (Tragödie im Hause Habsburg, 1924; Eine Dubarry von heute, 1926/27 ) and Mady Christians (Das brennende Herz, 1928/29).

Between 1930 and the early 1940s, Kayssler was also extremely active in German sound cinema, such as in Zwei Welten (1930), the German version of E.A. Dupont's Two Worlds, Stürme über dem Mont Blanc (Arnold Fanck, 1931) with Leni Riefenstahl, Das Flötenkonzert von Sans-souci (Gustav Ucicky, 1930) with Otto Gebuhr, the Harry Piel-film Das Schiff ohne Hafen (1931), and Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (Richard Oswald, 1931) with Max Adalbert. In 1932 he had the lead in the period piece on the Napoleonic wars, Die elf Schill'schen Offiziere (Rudolf Meinert, 1932). Other remarkable parts Kayssler had in e.g. Gold (Karl Hartl, 1934) with Hans Albers, and Der alte und der junge König (Hans Steinhoff, 1935) with Emil Jannings. In 1935 Kayssler had the lead in the anti-Russian film Friesennot by Willi Krause aka Peter Hagen. Other important leads he had in the Sherlock Holmes film Der Hund von Baskerville (Carl Lamac, 1937), the Kleist adaptation Der zerbrochene Krug (Gustav Ucicky, 1937) with Emil Jannings, as police prefect of Paris in Verwehte Spuren (Veit Harlan, 1938), as King of Prussia/German Emperor William I in Bismarck (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1940), and finally as Clara Schumann's father in Träumerei (1944) with Hilde Krahl as Clara and Mathias Wieman as Robert Schuman.

In March 1944, Kayssler's son Christian, who was also a popular film actor, was killed in an allied bombing raid. Kayßler was named as one of the Third Reich's most important artists in the Gottbegnadeten list of September 1944. He was killed during the Battle of Berlin, murdered by Red Army troops at his house in the suburb of Kleinmachnow, when trying to protect his wife.

Source: German Wikipedia, IMDB.

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