Marianne Hoppe

Born in Rostock Hoppe became a leading lady of stage and films in Germany She was born into a wealthy landowning family and was initially privately educated on her fathers private estate Later she attended school in Berlin and in Weimar where she began to attend theatre1 Hoppe first performed at 17 as a member of Berlins Deutsches Theater under director Max Reinhardt In 1935 she was hired by the controversial German actor and Director of the Prussian State Theatre under the Third Reich Gustav Gründgens They were married from 193646 until their divorce Speaking years after the marriage had ended Hoppe stated He was my love but never my great love that was work1 One of the characters in the film Mephisto was reportedly based on her Hoppe made no secret of her contacts with the Nazi elite in the 1930s40s including being invited to dinner by Hitler2 Her role in Der Schimmelreiter The Rider of the White Horse 1934 made her famous almost overnight while her Aryan face made her a darling of the Nazi elite1 Later Hoppe would label this period of her life as the black page in my golden book1 During her time acting at the home of the Prussian State Theatre the Schauspielhaus Hoppe developed her analytical approach to acting which she stated consisted in her taking apart every sentence and giving the use of language a brilliance This method was to be associated with Hoppe throughout her working life1 In 1946 her only child Benedikt Johann Percy Gründgens was born Four years later after her divorce from Gründgens Hoppe had a great success as Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williamss A Streetcar Named Desire and increasingly played avantgarde roles written by authors such as Heiner Muller Quartett 1994 and Thomas Bernhard who became her partner in private life as well She became a favourite of the young and iconoclastic directors Claus Peymann Robert Wilson and Frank Castorf Hoppe died in Siegsdorf Bavaria in 2002 from natural causes aged 93 German theater has lost its queen said Claus Peymann of the Berliner Ensemble whose theatre featured Hoppes last performance in Bertolt Brechts Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in December 19972 In one of her last interviews Hoppe stated I have a go at happiness every day That takes discipline a virtue every halfway decent actor should have