Hermine Sterler

Minna Stern (20 March 1894 – 25 May 1982), known professionally as Hermine Sterler, was a German-American actress whose career spanned both the silent and the talkie film eras on two continents.

Hermine Sterler
Born
Minna Stern

(1894-03-20)20 March 1894
Stuttgart, German Empire
Died25 May 1982(1982-05-25) (aged 88)
Stuttgart, Germany
NationalityGerman
OccupationActress
Years active1921–1966

Career

Sterler, who appeared in several Hollywood films, was once affiliated with the Burgtheater in Vienna.[1]

She debuted in 1918 at the Residenztheater Hannover and later performed in Berlin, where she appeared at the Kleinen Theater ("Little Theater"). She played a saloon lady and, from 1921, often appeared in German silent film. She flourished as a character actor in roles of young wives and mothers. In 1930 she appeared as Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna in Rasputin, Demon with Women.

In 1933, a German government decree was enacted by Joseph Goebbels under the auspices of a newly created agency called Die Reichskulturkammer. The decree stipulated that Jewish actors were, among other things, prohibited from performing on German stage. Sterler, who was a Jew, relocated to Vienna in 1933, where she continued to work in theater and cinema.

The Anschluss of Austria ended her artistic career there. Sterler next moved to London. In 1938, she immigrated to the United States from Zurich under her birth name Minna Stern. Film director Wilhelm Dieterle gave Sterler her first role in American cinema.[2]

During World War II and after, Sterler played mostly small roles in Hollywood productions portraying German or other European women. In the 1944 anti-Nazi film The Hitler Gang, she played the wife of Ernst Hanfstaengl. On November 10, 1944, Sterler became a United States naturalized citizen in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California at Los Angeles.

She gave actress Piper Laurie private acting lessons when Laurie was a child.[3]

Hermine Sterler died on 25 May 1982 in Stuttgart.

Selected filmography

Silent film

Talkies

Family

Sterler (née Minna Stern) was born 20 March 1894 in Bad Cannstatt, Stuttgart, to Max Stern (born 1853) and Bertha Wormser (née Bertha Emilia Wormser; 1865–1936), both of whom married each other 5 July 1888.

See also

References

General bibliography
  • Kester, Bernadette. Film Front Weimar: Representations of the First World War in German Films of the Weimar Period (1919-1933). Amsterdam University Press, 2003.

Inline citations
  1. "'William Tell' To Be Presented at El Capitan," Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1939, p., col. 6 (accessible via Newspapers.com at www.newspapers.com/image/385384273; subscription required)
  2. "Es wird im Leben dir mehr genommen als gegeben:" Lexikon der aus Deutschland und Österreich emigrierten Filmschaffenden 1933 bis 1945, by Kay Weniger, ACABUS Verlag (de) (2012), p. 486; ISBN 3862820491
  3. Laurie, Piper (2011). Learning to Live Out Loud: A Memoir. ISBN 9780823026685.
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