Magda Schneider

Magda Schneider was born on 17 May 1909 in Augsburg, Germany and a singer, stage and film actress. After her graduation at a monastery school, she studied stenography and office management at a business school, but also attended ballet lessons and art courses at the Augsburg School of Music. Six months later, she gave her stage debut as soubrette at the Gärtnerplatz- Theater in Munich and was discovered by Ernst Marischka, who offered her a role at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

After her film debut Boykott (1930), she was type casted as the simple girl, dreaming of a happy life in movies such as Zwei in einem Auto (1932) or Ein Mädel wirbelt durch die Welt (1934).

She launched her real film career with movies like "Zwei in einem Auto" (1932) and eventually "Liebelei" (1933) - one of her best movies in which she could unfold her whole acting talent.

In 1933, she got to know Wolf Albach-Retty, whom she married four years later.

Their children Rosemarie (aka Romy Schneider) and Wolf-Dieter were born in 1938 and 1941, but they divorced in 1945. After World War II, she appeared on stage and screen again, but was better known as ambitious mother, who urged on the career of her daughter Romy.

Like several other actors, she once visited Adolf Hitler at his mountain residence Berghof (1941).

She and Albach-Retty separated and the marriage ended in divorce in 1945.

Schneider again began filming in 1948 and promoted her daughter's career with the joint appearance in the 1953 film When the White Lilacs Bloom Again directed by Hans Deppe, a typical 1950s Heimatfilm which was the film debut of 14-year-old Romy Schneider. In the same Magda Schneider married the Cologne restaurant owner Hans Herbert Blatzheim.

In the 1950s, she played her mother or aunt in several movies such as Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (1953) or Sissi (1955).

Played her real life daughter Romy Schneider's character's mother in six movies: Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (1953), Sissi (1955), Sissi - Die junge Kaiserin (1956), The Girl and the Legend (1957), Sissi - Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin (1957) and Die Halbzarte (1959).

Magda Schneider arranged further appearances with her daughter in several movies such as Mädchenjahre einer Königin (Victoria in Dover), the films of the Sissi trilogy based on the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, with Romy Schneider starring in the title role and Magda Schneider playing the role of her mother Princess Ludovika of Bavaria, and in the 1958 film Die Halbzarte (Eva).

In the 1960s, Magda Schneider also starred in TV series.

In the last years of her life, she had to bear the death of her grandson David in 1981 and her daughter Romy in 1982.