Kristina Söderbaum

Biography

Kristina Söderbaum was born on 5 October 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a professor's daughter from Djursholm, Stockholm, Sweden. After graduation she went to Paris to learn French and by chance got a role in the short film Hur behandlar du din hund? (1934). In 1935, she studied history of art in Berlin and attended acting classes. There she got to know her future husband Veit Harlan. During WWII Kristina Söderbaum played the main parts in popular Nazi propaganda movies under the direction of her husband Veit Harlan. Between 1939 and 1945 they made together the successful films Covered Tracks (1938), The Immortal Heart (1939), The Trip to Tilsit (1939), Die goldene Stadt (1942), Immensee (1943), Opfergang (1944) and Burning Hearts (1945). The most infamous was Jud Süß (1940), a strong antisemitic propaganda film. Three years after "Jud Süss" she became an honoury student at Uppsala University, Sweden. Söderbaum said after the war that she regretted the films, but she never made a comeback as a popular actress. She didn't work until Harlan was allowed to direct again in 1950 and then appeared mostly in his films and on German TV until the 1990s. After Harlan's death in the 1964, she also established herself as a fashion photographer in Munich, Germany and wrote her memoirs, "Nichts bleibt immer so", in 1983. On 12 February 2001, she died in Hitzacker, Lower Saxony, Germany.