Franziska Ellmenreich was a German

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...

 stage actress. Ellmenreich is regarded as the last heroine of the German theater.

Family background

Ellmenreich was born into a family that excelled in the arts. Her great grandfather was a Christian singer Brandl (died 1795). Her grandfather was the actor Johann Baptist Ellmenreich (1770-1816), her grandmother, the actress Friederike Ellmenreich and her father was a singer, composer and theater director, Albert Ellmenreich

Albert Ellmenreich

Albert Ellmenreich was a German actor and writer, born February 10, 1816 in Karlsruhe, Germany; he died May 30, 1905 in Lübeck.- Life :Ellmenreich was the son of Johann Ellmenreich and his wife Friederike. He grew up in the cities of Hamburg , Mannheim and Frankfurt . In Frankfurt, Ellmenreich...

 (1816-1905) .

She married the playwright Richard Freiherr von Fuchs Nordhoff (1855-1897), with whom she gave birth to Felix Freiherr von Fuchs-Nordhoff (1881-1945), who became a painter. Their daughter also grew up to be a painter, Irene Marie Lührsen (1883-1968). Her grandson would also become a painter and stage designer Florence Freiherr von Fuchs Nordhoff (born 1914).

Life and career

Ellmenreich made her debut in 1862 in Meiningen

Meiningen

Meiningen is a town in Germany - located in the southern part of the state of Thuringia and is the district seat of Schmalkalden-Meiningen. It is situated on the river Werra....

. After performances in Mainz

Mainz

Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...

 and Kassel

Kassel

Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...

 1865-1875, she became active on stage in Hanover

Hanover

Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...

. In 1869 she was a guest at the Burgtheater in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. This was followed by other engagements in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 and 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...

. In the early 1880s she toured the Americas and in 1883 made guest performances in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England. After stopover at the Berlin court theater, from 1887 to 1892 she performed in Hamburg's city theater. From 1899 to 1901, she joined the court theater 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...

.

Then in 1901, Ellmenreich was co-founder of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus

Deutsches Schauspielhaus

The Deutsches Schauspielhaus is a theatre in the St. Georg quarter of the city of Hamburg, Germany. With a capacity for 1192 spectators, it places it as Germany's largest theatre...

in Hamburg. She performed at this theatre from 1901 to 1912. Subsequently, she was appointed as honorary member. Ellmenreich retired from acting in a farewell show at the Berlin court theatre in 1915. She died in 1931.
In 1948, a street in Hamburg was named after her. The street lies in the district of Mitte, in the suburbs of the city.

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