Meinhard, Miss "3", helping UFA ring in 1938. Image courtesy KHM Bilddatenbank.
If you've seen G.W. Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen), chances are good that Louise Brooks either led you to the film itself or won you over in the viewing process. However, there's a sly and spry costar that threatens to steal the show: Thymian's friend Erika, played by relative unknown Edith Meinhard. On a whim, I decided to dig deeper into Ms. Meinhard's background and repertoire...only to find that, sadly, there is next to no information about her. She was born Edith Kötteritzsch in Berlin in 1908, and after a couple of minor roles signed on with Pabst in 1929. From what I can tell, she was mostly relegated to bit parts in the '30s and '40s, though she has a fairly prominent role in 1931's Voruntersuchung, starring Gustav Fröhlich of Metropolis fame. Very few of her films can be found online, despite tireless searching, but the clips that I was able to find present an increasingly controlled and sanitized cinema experience as the Third Reich took its dark grip.
All film companies (and as a result, all entertainers and directors) were subject to intense scrutiny under Joseph Goebbels, then the Minister of Propaganda. Many entertainers employed throughout the Third Reich had no choice but to comply...anti-Nazi sentiment of any kind had dire consequences. Meinhard was working in Germany through most of the Nazi occupation, but that says nothing about her political beliefs. Her last credited role was in 1941's detective comedy Jenny und der Herr im Frack, and after a final (uncredited) part in 1943...she simply disappears. It's heartbreaking to think that someone can vanish almost completely unnoticed. I cannot find anything about her beyond film credits; no date of death (if any, though I'm hard-pressed to believe that she's still alive at the age of 103), no relatives, no marriage records, no other apparent name changes, no interviews or other press. Zilch. If you happen to have any information about Edith Meinhard (sometimes credited as Edith Meinhardt), feel free to contact me or leave a comment. In the meantime, the search continues...
7 comments:
great post... good detective work- and as someone who is partial to disappearing acts, very interesting.
Hi. This may help.
Berlin Telephone Directory. Edith Jensen-Meinhard, Schausp. 31 Rudesheimer Platz 6. From 1961 to 1968.
Great performance with Louise Brooks in Diary of a Lost Girl.
Regards
Ray
Ray, I just stumbled upon that information myself. The "Jensen" is throwing me for a loop...I'd think it would be written as Meinhard-Jensen, but after doing some digging, it looks like it can be written both ways. I finally kicked off a trial run with Ancestry after seeing that they had access to Berlin phone records. Many thanks for the tip!
Any progress on finding her? I watched Diary of a lost girl last night and thought she was brilliant, even better than Louise.
Unfortunately, I haven't found anything conclusive in my search...there's evidence to suggest that she was around after 1943, but not having access to German records puts things at a standstill. Who knows what else could be out there? I've been mostly celebrating her spirit by collecting her films...she lives on in celluloid.
any progress?
Unfortunately I have no new leads at the moment. It's been a while since I've done any research, but now's as good a time as any to start back up. Hoping to post some related ephemera here soon.
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