Rosa Porten

Rosa Porten (1884-1972) was the elder and lesser-known sister of German silent film star Henny Porten. Both sisters started in 1906 as an actress for the pioneering Messter company and Rosa became one of the first women in Germany to write and direct films.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1588. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1592. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1619. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2257. Photo: Mac Walten, Berlin.


German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 97/1. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin / Treumann- Larsson Film, Berlin.


German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 97/3. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin / Treumann- Larsen Film, Berlin.

Writer-director

Rosa Porten was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1884 (some sources say 1883 or 1889). She was the eldest daughter of opera baritone and later film director Franz Porten and his wife Vincenzia Porten-Wybiral. Her sister Henny Porten later became a legendary star of the German silent cinema.

As a child, Rosa got singing and acting lessons from her father and appeared together with her sister at school performances. Just like her sister, Rosa Porten's first film performance was in the 'Tonbild' (early sound film) Meissner Porzellan (1906) directed by their father for Messters Projektion GmbH. In the following years, she appeared in more of these early sound pictures like Die kleine Baronesse/The Little Daughter of the Baron (1908) and Im Fasching/In the Carnival (1908).

However, Rosa would be more active as a screenwriter than as an actress. She started this job with the Messter production Das Liebesglück der Blinden/The Joy of Love of the Blind (Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers, Curt A. Stark, 1911), in which her sister Henny made her debut as the leading lady opposite Friedrich Zelnik. In the 1910s, Rosa Porten was extremely active as a screenwriter for Messter and wrote such 20 minutes films as Das große Schweigen/The Great Silence (Rudolf Biebrach, 1915) starring her sister Henny.

For the Treumann-Larsen company, Rosa Porten and her husband Franz Eckstein wrote many scripts under the pseudonym of Dr. R. Portegg and they also directed these films. In some of these films, she even played the female lead too, such as in Die Wäscher-Resl (1916), the comedy Die Erzkokette (1917) with Reinhold Schünzel, the fast-paced comedy Die Landpommeranze/The Unwieldy Country Woman (1917), Die Augen der Schwester/The Eyes of the Sister (1918), and Themis (1918).

In other examples of these Treumann-Larsen productions like Das Opfer der Yella Rogesius/The Sacrifice of Yella Rogesius (1917) and Wanda's Trick (1918), Wanda Treumann played the lead. Probably the last film, which the couple Eckstein-Porten directed together, was Der nicht vom Weibe geborene (Franz Eckstein, Rosa Porten, 1918), starring Conrad Veidt as Satan. Rosa Porten also wrote such novels as 'Filmprinzeß' (Film Princess), 'Androgyne' and 'Die neue Generation' (The New Generation).


German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 3235. Photo: Treumann-Larsen-Film.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 3239. Photo: Treumann-Larsen-Film. Rosa Porten and Theodor Loos in Die Augen der Schwester/The eyes of the sister (Franz Eckstein, 1918). Porten also scripted the film.


German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no 3240. Photo: Treumann-Larsen-Film. Rosa Porten and Max Wogritsch in Gräfin Maruschka/Countess Maruschka (Franz Eckstein, Rosa Porten, 1917).


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. 2674. Photo: Treumann-Larssen-Film, Berlin. Rosa Porten in Das Musikantenmädel/The Musician Girl (N.N., 1918).


German collectors card by Ross Verlag for the album Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst. Teil I. Der stumme Film (Cigaretten-Bilderdienst Altona-Bahrenfeld 1935), Bild no. 43, Gruppe 41. Photo: Treumann-Larsen-Film. Eduard von Winterstein, Rosa Porten and Reinhold Schünzel in Die Erzkokette/The Superflirt (Franz Eckstein, Rosa Porten, 1917).


German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 57/2. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin / Treumann-Larsen-Film.

Scriptwriter

In the 1920s, Rosa Porten and Franz Eckstein went to work for the National-Film AG in Berlin, but with Porten only as a screenwriter and with Eckstein only as director. Examples of their films are Lotte Lore (1921) and Hedda Gabler (1924), starring Asta Nielsen.

In the mid-1920s, Eckstein and Porten stopped at National Film, but they did three more films: Das Mädchen aus der Fremde/The Foreign Girl (1926/27), Fahrendes Volk/Wandering Performers (1927), and Die Heiratsfalle/The marriage case (1928).

Afterwards, Rosa Porten stopped working as an actress. From 1931 to 1945 she lived happily in Pommern with Eckstein. Her husband died two months before the Russians and Poles invaded Pommern, forcing her to flee and ending up in Munich, where she wrote for newspapers, radio and cinema.

She had a small part in the Italo-German coproduction Land der Sehnsucht/Land of Longing (Erich Engel, Camillo Mastrocinque, 1950), which was never finished.

Rosa Porten died in Munich, Germany, in 1972.


German postcard in the Film Sterne Series by Rotophot, no. 148/1. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.


German postcard in the Film-Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 149/2. Photo: Becker & Maass.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1589. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1590. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2259. Photo: Mac Walten, Berlin.


German postcard by NPG, no. 703. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Source: Gabriele Hansch, Gerlinde Waz (Filmportal.de - German), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.