15 New cards from G.D.I.

On the 15th of every month, EFSP presents 15 vintage postcards from the collection of the Geoffrey Donaldson Institute - GDI. Last month, we did the final post on a big blue album from the estate of Dutch film historians Tjitte de Vries and Ati Mul. This album included mostly Dutch postcards from the 1920s to the 1950s. Today we have the first post on a smaller blue album from the same estate, but with mainly German postcards from the 1910s and 1920s. This post ends with two postcards from the French series Nos Artistes dans leur Loge.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 249. Photo: Nicola Perscheid. Theodor Becker as Othello.

Theodor Becker (1880-1952) was a German stage and silent screen actor. He was married to actress Maria Fein, later to actress Helma Seitz. His daughters Maria and Renate also became actresses.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin,-Wilm, no. 1533. Photo: Terra-Film. Adolphe Engers in Der Liebescorridor / The Love Passage (Urban Gad, Emil Albes, 1921).

Impressive Dutch actor Adolphe Engers (1884-1945) appeared in some 50 German and Dutch films in the 1920s and 1930s.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 3234. Photo: Treumann-Larsen.

Eugen Burg (1871-1944) was a German actor, writer and film director. From 1914 on, he appeared steadily in silent films. In the early 1930s, he appeared with his son-in-law, Hans Albers, in several popular action films.


German postcard by Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 3095. Photo: Atelier Oertel, Berlin W.

Albert Bassermann (1867-1952) was one of the first great German stage actors who worked for the cinema. In 1933 he fled the Nazi regime and became an Oscar nominated stage actor in Hollywood.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 5434.

Dagny Servaes (1894-1961) was a German-Austrian theatre and film actress. She reached her peak in Ernst Lubitsch's Das Weib des Pharao / The Pharao's Wife (1921).


German postcard by Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 7361. Leopoldine Konstantin in Die Tänzerin / The Dancer (Georg Jacoby, 1915).


German postcard by Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 7362. Photo: Dührkoop. Leopoldine Konstantin in Die Tänzerin / The Dancer (Georg Jacoby, 1915).

Leopoldine Konstantin (1886-1965) was a famous Austrian theatre and film character actress who worked for years with director Max Reinhardt. She played Claude Rains' dominant mother in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Notorious (1946). It was her sole Hollywood role.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 8667. Photo: Dührkoop.

Hans Wassmann (1873-1932) was a German film actor. Between 1914 and his death in 1932, Wassmann played in 50 German films, mostly in supporting parts.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 8859.

Eduard von Winterstein (1871-1961) was an Austrian-born film and theatre actor. His German film career spanned from the 1910s to the late 1950s, from the Wilhelminian cinema to the cinema of the GDR.


Hungarian postcard by Jozsef Pécsi for 'Shinhàzi Elet', Budapest. Photo: Angelo, Budapest, 1919. Sari Fedák in 'Szókimondó asszonysán' (Madame Sans-Gêne) by Victorien Sardou and Emile Moreau.

Hungarian actress and singer Sári Fedák (1879-1955) was one of the most famous prima donnas of her time. The temperamental operetta and film star was mixed up in several scandals.


German postcard by Verlag Ross, Berlin, no. 395/1, 1922. Photo: Atelier Balazs, Berlin.

Austrian film star Lilly Flohr (1893-1978) was a busy actress, soubrette, cabaret artist and chanson singer on stage. From 1918 on, she starred in 25 silent films.


German postcard by Ross Verlag / W.J. Morlins, Berlin, no. 427/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Karl Schenker.

Austrian-American soprano singer and actress Fritzi Massary (1882-1969) was one of the greatest 20th-century operetta divas. She was a superstar in Berlin and Vienna in the Weimar era, but after the rise of the Nazis, Massary was forced to flee Germany. In London, she appeared in an operetta that Noel Coward wrote for her. The popular singer also starred in several early German ‘sound pictures’ and other silent films.


German postcard by Verlag Ross, Berlin, no. 428/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Binder / May Film.

Mia May (1884-1980) was one of the first divas of the German cinema. She starred in many films by her husband, producer, writer and director Joe May.


French postcard in the series Nos Artistes dans leur Loge, no. 148. Photo: Comoedia.

Charles-Louis-Adrien Siblot was born in 1871 in Vincennes, Val-de-Marne, France. Siblot was an actor, known for Molière, sa vie, son oeuvre (1922) and Le chasseur de chez Maxim's (1933). Charles Siblot died in 1943 in Paris, France.


French postcard in the series Nos Artistes dans leur Loge, no. 199. Photo: Comoedia. Henri Fabert as Franz Schubert in 'Chanson d'amour', the French adaptation of the operetta 'Das Dreimäderlhaus' (Heinrich Berté, 1912), first performed in Paris in 1921.

Henri Fabert was born in 1879. He was an actor and director, known for such films as Blanc comme neige (1931), La merveilleuse tragédie de Lourdes (1933) and La chanson du souvenir (1937). Fabert died in 1941.

All postcards are part of the collection of the Geoffrey Donaldson Institute (GDI). This post will be continued on 15 September 2025.