Anna Dammann

Beautiful Anna Dammann (1912-1993) was one of the major theatre actresses of Germany in the 20th Century. In 1932 she debuted on the stage as Brunhild in Friedrich Hebbel’s Die Nibelungen and would go on to play leading roles in many famous classic and modern plays. Sadly she appeared in only a few, not very outstanding films.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, A 2534/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann/Terra.

City Girl
Anna Dammann was born as Edith Geese in Altona (now Hamburg), Germany, in 1912. Her first film was Oberwachtmeister Schwenke (1935, Carl Froelich) starring Gustav Fröhlich. Her next appearance was as the city girl in Die Reise nach Tilsit/The Trip to Tilsit (1939, Veit Harlan) who lures fisherman Frits van Dongen (aka Philip Dorn) away from his wife, Kristina Söderbaum. This sound remake of F.W. Murnau's classic silent film Sunrise (1927) was a far more earthy, darker and more realistic adaptation of the novel by Hermann Sudermann.


German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, nr. A 3780/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Ruth Wilhelmi.

Anti-British Propaganda
Anna Dammann next starred in Johannisfeuer/St. John's Fire (1939, Arthur Maria Rabenalt) with Ernst von Klipstein. During the war years she appeared in the Nazi-made anti-British propagandafilm Mein Leben für Irland/My Life for Ireland (1941, Max W. Kimmich) with René Deltgen, Nacht ohne Abschied/Night Without Goodbye (1943, Erich Waschneck) with Karl Ludwig Diehl, and Gefährtin meines Sommers/My Summer Companion (1943, Fritz Peter Buch) opposite Paul Hartmann. After WW II she played merely on the stage. She appeared in only one more film, under the name Anna Dannemann, in Oberarzt Dr. Solm/Senior Physician Dr. Solm (1955, Paul May) with Hans Söhnker. Incidentally she appeared on television, like in Die Troerinnen des Euripides/The Trojan Women of Euripides (1959, Paul Verhoeven). Anna Dammann died in 1993 in Munich, Germany.


German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, A 3893/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Ruth Wilhelmi.

Sources: Stepahnie d'Heil (Steffi-line.de), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos) and IMDb.