Lil Dagover

A prominent German film actress born on 30 September 1887 at Madiven Java the daughter of a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch authorities Sent at the age of ten to BadenBaden to study she later entered the cinema thanks to her marriage in 1917 to the actor Fritz Dagover who was 25 years her senior They divorced in 1919 but not before he had introduced her to director Robert Wiene and other notables of German cinema She made her screen debut in Fritz Langs Harakiri 1919 Immediately after she appeared in Wienes classic expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari aka The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 1920 Apart from three trips one to Sweden in 1927 another to France in 19289 and one to Hollywood in 1931 most of Lil Dagovers career and fate was linked to that of the German cinema where her role was usually that of the frail menaced heroine She continued to star in a great number of films during the Nazi era Among her best performances were her roles in Congress Dances 1931 in Gerhard Lamprechts The Higher Command 1935 and in Veit Harlans The Kreutzer Sonata 1937 She also acted in the Deutsches Theatre Berlin the Salzburg Festival at forces shows and at war theaters At one time she was reported to have been a close friend of Adolf Hitler In 1944 she received the War Merits Cross Dagover continued her career in postwar Germany playing many supporting parts until the late 1970s