Magda Schneider

Biography

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). 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. In the 1950s, she played her mother or aunt in several movies such as Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (1953) or Sissi (1955). 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. She died on 30 July 1996 in Berchtesgaden, Germany.