Annemarie Wendl
Encyclopedia
Wendl was born into an upper class family in Bavaria and began her training as an actress in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
at Lucie Höflich
Lucie Höflich
Lucie Höflich was a German actor, teacher and head of the Staatliche Schauspielschule in Berlin. She was born Helene Lucie von Holwede on 20 February 1883 in Hannover and died in 9 October 1956 in Berlin...
's seminar. Afterwards, she played classical roles on stage in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, Augsburg
Augsburg
Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
, Innsbruck
Innsbruck
- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...
, Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, Bamberg
Bamberg
Bamberg is a city in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in Upper Franconia on the river Regnitz, close to its confluence with the river Main. Bamberg is one of the few cities in Germany that was not destroyed by World War II bombings because of a nearby Artillery Factory that prevented planes from...
and Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As at 31 March 2011, Ingolstadt had 125.407 residents...
. In her youth, she played "all sentimental characters", such as Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
's Gretchen and Emilia Galotti
Emilia Galotti
Emilia Galotti is a play in five acts by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , which premiered on 8 March 1772 in Brunswick . The work is a classic example of German bürgerliches Trauerspiel . Other works in this category include Schiller's Kabale und Liebe and Hebbel's Maria Magdalene...
. Later she played character roles, such as Adelheid in Götz von Berlichingen
Götz von Berlichingen
Gottfried "Götz" von Berlichingen and also known as Götz of the Iron Hand, was a German Imperial Knight and mercenary....
, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
, Maria Stuart in the play by Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
and the title role in Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's Mother Courage
Mother Courage
Mother Courage is a character from a Grimmelshausen novel Lebensbeschreibung der Ertzbetrügerin und Landstörtzerin Courasche dating from around 1670...
. Her last theatrical works were The Widow in the Green Tree (1997) and Sanssouci in 2001.
Wendl began working in film in 1961 and made more than 35 films and TV productions. During her long career on the big screen, Wendl was seen in both soft-porn movies (Graf Porno), as well as some movies of Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder was a German movie director, screenwriter and actor. He is considered one of the most important representatives of the New German Cinema.He maintained a frenetic pace in film-making...
(1976's Ich will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt/I Only Want You to Love Me). Her television work includes series like Die Fünfte Kolonne, Meister Eder und sein Pumuckl and Der Komissar, where she made guest appearances in a few episodes.
Wendl was best known for her role as "Else Kling" in the German weekly soap Lindenstraße
Lindenstraße
Lindenstraße is a German television show on ARD's Das Erste, one of Germany's two publicly administered TV channels. The first episode was aired on December 8, 1985, and since then has been broadcast weekly. Its current timeslot on Das Erste is Sundays at 6:50 pm...
, which started in December 1985. She appeared in the first episode Herzlich Willkommen and remained in the series' cast until May 2006. Her character, Else Kling, lost her husband, Egon Kling, in a car accident in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in 1998. In the episode "Abschied und Ankunft" (#1069), Else Kling died. She played Else Kling for such a long time that she became one of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
's most popular TV actresses. She was called "the nation's caretaker" or also "the nation's worst blabbermouth" (due to her character's habit of unceasingly spreading gossip). She also appeared in some commercials depicting Else Kling and sang rap songs. She published two CDs, Du Depp in 1993 and Else Goes Dance in 1995. Else Kling was often compared to J.R. Ewing
J.R. Ewing
John Ross Ewing, Jr., more commonly known as J. R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman, was a central, nefarious figure on the hit CBS television series Dallas . J. R...
.
Privately, Wendl worked with young people and liked to wear fashionable clothes. On the Lindenstraße homepage her birthday was initially given as December 26, 1922 or 1921 until she turned 90 in 2004. An official rectification was published, revealing that Wendl was eight years older than her character (Else Kling was born on May 14, 1922, and died on May 25, 2006 at the age of 84).
In 2005, Wendl suffered a stroke and had three bouts of pneumonia, which caused her to cease work on Lindenstraße. After her character's death, Wendl received coverage in the yellow press quite regularly, most notably about her health. In an interview in June 2006, Wendl said that she did not yet want to die.
Wendl, who was married to Siegmar Kleinschmidt from 1942 until his death in 1944, lived in Munich and is survived by her son.