European Film Star Postcards: Jutta Hoffmann

01 March 2023

Jutta Hoffmann

German actress Jutta Hoffmann (1941) has appeared in more than 40 films and television shows since 1961. She was one of the best-known actresses in the GDR from the end of the 1960s and has been one of the most important actresses in the German-speaking world since the beginning of the 1980s.

East-German postcard in the Progress Starfoto series by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 4 / F / 72. Photo: Schwarz / DEFA.

East German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Verlag, Berlin, no. 1928, 1963. Photo: DEFA / Werner Bergmann.

Banned by the GDR censors

Jutta Hoffmann was born in 1941 in Halle an der Saale, Deutschland. She was the first child of Alice and Erich Hoffmann and has a sister, Sabine, who is three years younger. While still at school in Schkopau, she appeared in the amateur drama group of the Buna-Werke in Schkopau.

After graduating from high school in Merseburg, she studied at the film academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg from 1959 to 1962. She joined the ensemble of the Maxim Gorki Theatre after completing her training. From 1965 to 1967 she was a member of the ensemble of the Deutsches Theater, and in 1973 she went to the Berliner Ensemble.

In addition to her dominant theatre work, she repeatedly appeared in front of the camera for cinema and television productions. In 1961 Hoffmann made her film debut as Katrin in the feature film Das Rabauken-Kabarett/Rough's Neck's Show (Werner W. Wallroth, 1961) with Horst Jonischkan. She played the professor's daughter Penny in Frank Vogel's Julia lebt/Julia lives (1963) and as Lämmchen in the television film Kleiner Mann - was nun?/Little man - what now? (Hans-Joachim Kasprzik, 1967).

Both the films Denk bloß nicht, dass ich heule/Just Don't Think I'll Cry (Frank Vogel, 1966) and Die Karla/Karla (Herrmann Zschoche, 1966) were banned by the GDR censors in 1966. They could only be seen after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1972, she was awarded the actor's prize for the leading role in Der Dritte/Her Third (Egon Günther, 1972) with Armin Mueller-Stahl. She played the single mother Margit looking for a new partner. Der Dritte won two National Prizes and was screened at the Venice Film Festival in 1972, where Jutta Hoffmann won an award for Best Actor in the category Venezia Critici.

Günther also directed her in the two-part Arnold Zweig adaptation Junge Frau von 1914/Young woman from 1914 (1970), the Thomas Mann adaptation Lotte in Weimar (Egon Günther, 1974), in which her gossipy Adele Schopenhauer was wonderful, and Der Schlüssel/The Key (1974). She also appeared in Das Versteck/The Hiding Place (Hermann Zscoche, 1977) with Manfred Krug. In 1979 she played for the last time for the DEFA in the Indian film Blauvogel/Blue Bird (Ulrich Weiss, 1979). Hoffmann left the GDR in 1983.

East German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Verlag, Berlin, no. 2121, 1964. Photo: Klaus Fischer.

East German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Verlag, Berlin, no. 2228, 1965. Photo: Hirschfeld.

A wonderfully loose and forceful role

In the mid-1980s, Jutta Hoffmann was seen more and more often on West German stages such as the Münchner Kammerspiele and the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. At the end of the 1980s, she took up a professorship at the Hamburg Academy of Music and Theatre.

She also continued to star in films. Alexander Kluge directed her in the West German film Der Angriff der Gegenwart auf die übrige Zeit/The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time (Alexander Kluge, 1985).

She played a wonderfully loose and forceful role in the brash women's prison and gangster musical Bandits (Katja von Garnier, 1989) alongside Katja Riemann. From 1998 to 2002, Jutta Hoffmann also appeared as Inspector Wanda Rosenbaum on television in the successful crime series Polizeiruf 110/Police Call 110.

In 2005, Hoffmann was honoured by the DEFA Foundation for her services to German film. On the occasion of her 70th birthday, the Filmmuseum Potsdam dedicated an exhibition to her. Since 2011, Hoffmann has had a star on the Boulevard of Stars in Berlin.

Hoffmann was married in her first marriage to the director Herrmann Zschoche and is married in her second marriage to the Austrian actor and director Nikolaus Haenel, with whom she has two children. The rapper Haiyti is her granddaughter. Jutta Hoffmann lives in Potsdam.