Hertha Thiele

In 1998 German film historians Heide Schlüpmann and Karola Gramman noted "her acting success may well have been based upon her image which met the homo-erotic desires of both men and women, though perhaps more those of women", and that Hertha Thiele "told us she would have liked to have played a 'proper love scene' with a man, once in her life: her image, moulded by men, didn't allow her the expression of this desire".

Towards the end of her life, western feminists researching the history of Mädchen in Uniform sought her out and she enjoyed a small measure of renewed cult celebrity before she died in 1984.

In 1975 Thiele's work was featured in a television documentary, Das Herz auf der linken Seite and in 1983 a monograph on her life and work was published by Deutsche Kinemathek.

Hertha Thiele went to GDR again in 1966 and was able to assert as an actress again. She played at theaters and appeared in many TV productions.

Hertha Thiele returned to East Germany after the war but was unsuccessful in her efforts to begin a theatre. She returned to Switzerland and worked as a psychiatric nursing assistant during most of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966 Thiele again returned to the GDR, working in stage productions in Magdeburg and Leipzig.

Although returning to Germany in 1949, where she didn't succeed in staring a theater career, she later lived again in Switzerland and Paris, working as a psychiatric nursing assistant. In 1966, she finally returned to East Germany.

After refusing to appear in Nazi propaganda movies, she was prohibited to work as an actress in Germany and emigrated to Switzerland (1937).

When she refused to act in the propaganda movie "Hans Westmar" in 1933 this meant the end of her career in the National Socialist Germany. She was excluded from the Reichstheater and Reichsfilmkammer in 1936, one year later she went to Switzerland where she carried on "middle-class" works for the time being. Only from 1942 she got a contract at the Stadttheater Bern and was able to appear on stage again.

She was an actress, known for Mädchen in Uniform (1931), Kleiner Mann - was nun? (1933) and Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? (1932). She was married to Heinz Klingenberg and Wolfgang Wohlgemuth.

She continued to work in theatre during the early 1930s, including productions with Max Reinhardt (Harmonie, 1932) and Veit Harlan (Veronika, 1935).

The actress Hertha Thiele began her theater career in 1928 where she had her breakthrough two years later with the play "Krankheit der Jugend". The success of this play led a film adaption and to Hertha Thiele's film debut. The movie was called "Mädchen in Uniform" (1931). The movie was a box-office hit and lived from the female artists.

Hertha Thiele was born on May 8, 1908 in Leipzig, Germany.