Austrian stage and screen character actress, from 1912 connected with the Deutschen Theater in Berlin. As ideological opponents of the regime, she and her husband (both committed communists) were forced to flee to Switzerland after the Nazis rose to power in 1933. There, she became a co-founder of the movement Freies Deutschland. She re-settled in East Berlin in 1951 and enjoyed a successful career in Defa films and on East German television.