Trivia

The decision being a member of the Latvian State Theatre would cost Leiko her life. Xenophobia played a major role in Stalin's political purges of the late 1930s, as the dictator was determined to eliminate foreigners (including Latvians) from positions of power and influence. In December 1937 the Latvian State Theatre was shut down and virtually the entire company, including Leiko, was arrested on fabricated charges of belonging to a "counter-revolutionary nationalist group" in league with fascists.

What became of her three year-old granddaughter is unknown.

Leiko made her performing debut at Riga's Apollo Theatre at the age of 19.

Leiko had one daughter, Nora, who married a retired Soviet diplomat and lived in Russian Georgia. When Nora died in childbirth in 1935, the actress agreed to raise her granddaughter in Riga and traveled cross country to fetch her. On the return journey she was delayed in Moscow, where she accepted an invitation to become a permanent member of the Latvian State Theatre.

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, she returned to her native Latvia.

On 15 December 1937 Leiko was arrested on false charges of belonging to a "Latvian nationalist conspiracy". On 3 February 1938 she was shot and buried in a mass grave at the secret NKVD killing field at Butovo, near Moscow.

She was "posthumously rehabilitated in absence of a crime" in 1958.

She studied at Vienna's Imperial Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before moving to Germany in 1910, settling in Berlin in 1917.

When the silent movie era ended Leiko retired from film acting.

Following a 10-minute "trial", she was shot and buried in a mass grave at the secret NKVD killing field at Butovo, near Moscow.

As an actress Marija Leiko conquered the German big screen first starring in the Die Diamantenstiftung (1917), Kain (1918), Ewiger Strom (1919), Die Frau im Käfig (1919) and Lola Montez (1919) as the dancer.

Highlights of her stage career were engagements with Max Reinhardt's company (1917 to 1920) and at the National Theatre under Erwin Piscator (1926).

In 1908 her lover, then actor and later director Janis Guter, was suspected of involvement in the murder of a policeman, and the couple fled to Austria via Denmark.

Her repertory included Ophelia and Gertrude in "Hamlet", Gretchen in "Faust", Natasha in "The Lower Depths", and Elizabeth of Valois in "The Robbers".

Few of her silent films survive.

During the so-called Mopping-Up by Stalin's henchmen Marija Leiko was arrested as a spy because of her past in Germany and she was interrogated hard.

In 1935 she visited the Soviet Union and stayed to join the company of the Latvian State Theatre in Moscow. This theatre was shut down during Stalin's purges.

The cinema offered Leiko a broader range, enabling her to tackle comedy and contemporary drama as well as costume epics. Her 26 screen credits include "Kain" (1918), "Lola Montez" (title role, 1919), director F.W. Murnau's "Satanas" (1920), and "Die Rothausgasse" (1928). Three were directed by Guter, though their relationship had ended by 1919.

About her manner of death exist different versions. One says that Marija Leiko did not see a way out of the situation and committed suicide in her cell by hanging respectively that she was executed by a firing squad.

2024 biopic Maria's Silence (2024).