Jester Naefe

Beautiful, Austrian-born actress Jester Naefe (1924-1967) had a short film career in the German cinema with highlights in the late 1940s and the mid-1950s. Because of her roles and her sexy looks, the press labelled her the ‘German Marilyn Monroe’.


German card by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 2975.


German postcard by ISV, no. C 4. Photo: Divina / Gloria / Grimm.


German card by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 1528. Photo: Filmaufbau / Deutsche London / Lilo-photo. Still from Mamitschka (Rolf Thiele, 1955).


German postcard by Kolibri Verlag, no. 1954. Photo: publicity still for Die goldene Brücke / The Golden Bridge (Paul Verhoeven, 1956). Collection: Meiter.

Tumultuous marriage

Jester-Helene Naefe was born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of a truck driver, Herbert Naefe.

At the age of 16, Jester went to Berlin to follow acting lessons at the Ackermann Theatre School. Soon she appeared on stage in the Breslauer Schauspielhaus in Breslau and in the Intimen Theatre in Hamburg. In 1948, producer-director Rolf Meyer gave her her first film part in the short film Sie sind nicht gemeint / You Were Not Meant (Answald Krüger, 1948) with Erik Ode.

This debut was soon followed by more secondary roles in Diese Nacht vergess ich nie / I'll Never Forget That Night (Johannes Meyer, 1949) with Gustav Fröhlich, Der bagnosträfling / The Prisoner (Gustav Fröhlich, 1949) with Paul Dahlke, Wer bist du, den ich liebe? / Who Is This Person I Love? (Géza von Bolváry, 1949) with Iván Petrovich, and Das Fräulein und der Vagabund / The Girl and the Tramp (Albert Benitz, 1949) with Hardy Krüger.

In 1949, she married the rich, Hungarian business entrepreneur Alfred Tauszky. Jester stopped making films to concentrate on family life. The marriage was tumultuous: Tauszky slapped her in public during a reception in Bad Oldesloe. In 1951, the couple had to leave Hamburg for Rome when Tauszky was prosecuted for tax evasion.

Naefe and Tauszky had two daughters, Vivian (1952) and Silvia (born 1953). In 1953, Tauszky deserted his family and fled to Caracas, Venezuela. Jester returned with her daughters to Germany, first to Hamburg, later to Munich (München).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag. Collection: Meiter.


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. I 413. Photo: Filmaufbau / Deutsche London / Czerwonski. Publicity still for Mamitschka (Rolf Thiele, 1955).


German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 2151. Photo: Czerwonski / H-D-Film / Deutsche London.


German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1454. Photo: Arthur Grimm / CCC-Film / Allianz. Publicity still for Stern von Rio / Star from Rio (Kurt Neumann, 1955).

Sand, love and salt

Jester Naefe took up her film career in 1954, and the flamboyant beauty would make twelve films in the following three years. Among these films were Die Kleine Stadt will schlafen gehen / The Little Town Will Go to Sleep (Hans H. König, 1954), Le destructeur / Das bekenntnis der Ina Kahr / Confession of Ina Kahr (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1954), co-starring with Curd Jürgens, Stern von Rio / Star from Rio (Kurt Neumann, 1955) with Willy Fritsch, and Die Goldene Brücke / The Golden Bridge (Paul Verhoeven, 1956) with Paul Hubschmid.

Her most famous role was as Lydia in the remake of the 1932 film operetta Der Kongress tanzt / Congress Dances (Franz Antel, 1955). In 1957, during the shooting of the Italian-German coproduction La Ragazza della salina / Sand, Love and Salt (František Cáp, 1957) in Portoroz, Yugoslavia, she had a fighting scene with lead actress Isabella Corey. During the scene, she fell and hit the back of her head on a rock.

She soon started getting bad headaches, and the headaches were followed by temporary paralysis. Despite her illness, she finished the film, co-starring Marcello Mastroianni. Easter 1958, her illness seemed vanished, and she went to the USA for a TV show. Hollywood star Gregory Peck reportedly called her ‘one of the most attractive and beautiful women in the world’.

In 1959, she was treated again at a Munich hospital, and her illness was diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. Jester Naefe had to retire from the film business. In the 1960s, when the medical bills consumed all of her earnings, she retired to live with her mother in her modest home in Wolfratshausen in Upper Bavaria.

After a long and painful period of illness, she died in 1967 in Geretsried, near Wolfratshausen, forgotten by her colleagues and the public. She was only 42, although the obituaries gave her age as 37. Her daughter Vivian Naefe is now a celebrated film and TV director.


German card by Lux.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 2027. Photo: Rhombus / Herzog-Film / Czerwonski. Publicity still for Lumpazivagabundus / Gentleman-vagabond (Franz Antel, 1956).


German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1907. Photo: Bavaria / Schorcht / Betzler. Publicity still for La ragazza della salina / Sand, Love and Salt (Frantisek Cáp, 1957).

Sources: Philippe Pelletier (CinéArtistes.com), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 1 December 2025.

The Choice of Meiter

Our guest today is my colleague-collector Meiter from the city of Groningen in the north of the The Netherlands. Regularly I buy film star postcards from her e-shop at the Dutch site Marktplaats. We started to correspond about the beauty of postcards, about our passion for collecting, film, our children and what they like to eat, about life. Thus I invited her to write at EFSP about her favorite European film star postcards, and she accepted. Meiter: "I like postcards so much, because they resemble (and when old, often are) real photos. They tell a story and represent a certain era. Because they are cards of filmstars, you can read a lot about them in books, magazines and on the internet. You can also make up your own story."
So, here's the Choice of.... Meiter.


Lilli Palmer. German postcard by UFA, Berlin. Collection: Meiter.
Meiter: "This is one of my favourite cards of Lilli Palmer. She seems relaxed and even laughs. On most of her photos she comes across as an elegant and beautiful woman, but remote. On this one she wears her Sunday dress with, what looks like, an apron. Her husband is out hunting and she just finished cleaning the house and enjoys a well deserved rest in the garden. I like the kitschiness and colours."


Sophia Loren. French postcard by Éditions Hazan, Paris. Collection: Meiter.
"Oh, oh, how beautiful. It is not a very old card (I am sure there must be an original somewhere), but it was one of the first cards of which I thought ‘I must have it’. What first struck me was the thing on which she is sitting: is it a chair? It looks like a retro 1960’s design chair, but you only see a curved leg. Sophia manages to sit quite elegantly on it and has a stylish, yet coquettish air. And still, she has this rather innocent look. (And why is she pointing at her knee?) I love it."


Marilyn Monroe. Vintage postcard, no. PU 13. Collection: Meiter.
"I know Marilyn is a Hollywood Filmstar, not a European Star. But this card is My Pride. It is a card I have not seen before. (Now some people will say, of course, it is quite common). On the back it only says “Nr. PU 13”. I assume PU stands for Pin Up and perhaps it is part of a series pin-up cards, Marilyn being number 13 (the unlucky number..). She represents the optimistic 1950’s and 60’s and plays those funny roles in her movies. Yet, she herself led this tragic life and had to play a role both in her movies and her own life. Nevertheless, I am just very proud of this card and like to boast about it."


O.W. Fischer. German postcard by IRMA-Verlag, Stuttgart. Collection: Meiter.
"O.W. Fischer loved cats and, as we can see on this card, cats loved him. I never understood this man. That makes him interesting. He seemed to lead a life of opposites. This photo represents an example: although at he end of his life he lived for and with his cats, he left half of his money to a dogs’ home. This cat is ignorant of the fact that she will not inherit any money. She just adores him."


Caterina Valente. German postcard by UFA, Berlin. Collection: Meiter.
"I don’t have anything with Caterine Valente and her music, but I love her cards. A very photogenic lady, and the more kitsch the better."


Jester Naefe. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag. Collection: Meiter.
"Jester Naefe was also called the German Marilyn Monroe. She had a promising future as an actress. Unfortunately she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and died, after an agressive progression of this disease, 8 years later, only 37 years old."


Jeanne Moreau. East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb. Collection: Meiter.
"BEAUTIFUL. This card reminds me of a picture of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn never had her prom photo taken. In 1956, when she was 30 (!) years old, she asked Milton Greene if he could photograph her as a ‘prom-girl’. The picture Greene made, looks just like this photo of Jeanne Monroe..uh..Moreau."


Gina Lollobrigida. French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 55. Collection: Meiter.
"This card is not a cliché picture of La Lollobrigida. I like the colours in it. It is not kitschy, yet colourful. It is as if Gina happens to pass by and accidentally had her picture taken. She seems rather young, but frankly I have no idea. Rather mysterious. But then again I do not know much about her, and it might be a scene in one of her most famous films."


Claudia Cardinale. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag. Collection: Meiter.
"Claudia once signed a contract which forbade her to marry, gain weight and cut her hair. She already had given birth to a son when she was 17 years old. The family pretended that Claudia was a (much older) sister. When he was 19, he was told his older sister was his mother. How much are you willing to give up to be a filmstar? Claudia Cardinale apparently quite a lot. Originally she did not want to be a moviestar at all. She wanted to be a teacher in her home country Tunisia. Which would have made her happier..."


And last but not least: Anny Ondra. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6847/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Lothar Stark-Film. Collection: Meiter.
"I hesitated between Sybille Schmitz and Anny Ondra. But I saw that an extensive article already had been written about the androgyne, alcoholic, drug-addicted, bisexual Sybille Schmitz (I just wanted to use all these descriptions in connection with Sybille Schmitz), so the last card is of pretty, pretty Anny Ondra. When I read about pretty Anny Ondra, I have to think of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ where a silent movie is transformed into a musical with real sound. Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) appears to have a rather shriekish and screaming voice and it is decided that her voice will be dubbed over. Something similar happened to Anny Ondra, not because she was loud-voiced, but because her thick accent was considered unacceptable. I think she sounded lovely, but it is true that she did not sound like a London born girl.. She looks lovely and was married to the same man, a German boxer, for 54 years. Quite romantically. Yet, I am sure there must be more to this story."

Thanks Meiter, bedankt Carla!

The Choice of... is an irregularly appearing series. Earlier guests were Egbert Barten, Véronique3, Didier Hanson, Asa, Bunched Undies, Miss Mertens, and Manuel Palomino Arjona.