li-da
Lida Baarova
October 31, 2000
Lida
Baarova
Goebbels's screen goddess
mistress dies unforgiven
By Louise Potterton in
Vienna
ALONE and unforgiven in her
native land, Lida Baarova, the Czech film idol who lured Hitler's
propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels into a disastrous affair, has
died in Salzburg aged 86.
She was never forgiven by
her countrymen for her pre-war relationship with Goebbels. As a
leading proponent of Nazi racial theories, Goebbels courted Hitler's
anger through his affair with an "inferior" Slav. The Fuhrer
eventually ordered him to end it.
Austrian police said
Baarova probably died of heart failure. A spokesman added: "She had
just vegetated, had resorted to drink and was on medication which
strongly influenced her life." Her German publishers said her
autobiography, The Soft Bitterness of Life, would be published soon.
In an interview three years ago in her Salzburg flat, Baarova said
her greatest wish was to return to her home country. But she never
went back, and there was no official response to her death in Prague
yesterday.
Many older Czechs still
remember her with affection and suggest she was more naive than evil.
Despite Baarova's fondness for memorabilia, she kept no souvenirs of
her time with Goebbels. "I've torn up all my pictures of us. Thanks
to him I fell into the depths of hell," she said. Friends said the
two had enjoyed a passionate relationship, although the former
actress prevaricated until the last: "Yes, Goebbels fell in love with
me but I didn't love him.
"I was afraid of him and
what he would do because I kept turning down his offers, although he
always behaved charmingly and was always very nice to me. I remember
he once gave me a gold bracelet for Christmas. Hitler made a huge
fuss about it. He called Goebbels in and told him to drop me and
return to his wife and children. I couldn't take the pressure and I
returned to Prague. Goebbels never tried to contact me
again."
Her life in Austria was a
far cry from how she lived in pre-war Germany. At 20 she was an
instant hit with her first German film Bacarole, in 1935. She later
starred in numerous propaganda films. Her stunning looks made her the
toast of the Nazi elite. But her affair with Goebbels was the turning
point in her rise to fame. When Goebbels moved her into his villa,
his wife, Magda, complained to Hitler.
Goebbels returned to his
family and Baarova fled to Czechoslovakia. From 1943 she lived in
Rome and worked on films with de Sica and Fellini, including La
Biscara. But when she was arrested in 1945 by American troops and
later tried as a Gestapo spy, it left her reputation in
ruins.
October 31, 2000
Lida
Baarova
LIDA BAAROVÁ, who
has died aged 90, was a Czech film star greatly admired by Dr Josef
Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and
Propaganda.
They met at a party in
1934, the year before her first German film Barcarole made her a
household name in Germany. In England critics were less impressed.
"She did nothing to justify her choice for the leading part", one of
them noted, adding loftily that "she possesses the generous build
which has lately become popular on the German stage and
screen."
Lida Baarová
certainly suited Goebbels, who became obsessed with her. "He told me
he loved me time and again," she recalled 60 years later, "and I felt
his eyes burning into my back every time we were in the same room
together." The Fuhrer too, she vouchsafed, was given to staring
mutely in her direction; indeed, when he visited her film studio he
seemed to her to be mesmerised. Shortly afterwards he invited her to
tea.
She arrived at the wheel of
her BMW, which (as she remembered) Hitler seemed to consider rather
too liberated. On this occasion, however, he found his tongue to the
extent of telling her that she reminded him of Gerri Raubel who, he
encouragingly explained, had committed suicide on his account.
Another time, Hitler told her that she should become a citizen of the
Reich: "You could do well for yourself," he promised. But Lida
Baarová remained immune to these blandishments, telling him
that she preferred to remain a Czech. The tea invitations
ceased.
Dr Goebbels's fires,
however, burned ever fiercer. He lived only three doors along from
the house on Lake Wannsee which Lida Baarová shared with
Gustav Froehlich, her co-star in Barcarole. Though Lida
Baarová always emphasised the innocence of her relations with
Goebbels - "why would I be interested in a 36-year-old father of five
when I was a 20-year-old beautiful woman with men falling at my
feet?" - somehow Froehlich was never convinced.
Hermann Goring placed a
wiretap on Lida Baarová's telephone, and enjoyed spreading
scandalous stories about her and Goebbels in the highest Nazi
circles. Himmler also liked to tell how there were lines of women
waiting to swear how Goebbels had coerced them: "I've turned the
choicest statements over to the Fuhrer." Goebbels himself felt the
necessity to tell his wife Magda about his infatuation. Magda
complained to Emmy Goring that her husband was "the devil incarnate".
But she did not stop there, inviting Lida Baarová round to
accuse her to her face of having an affair with her husband. "Don't
worry," Lida Baarová returned, "I'm not interested in
him."
Magda Goebbels was no more
convinced than Gustav Froehlich had been, and in 1938 complained
about her husband to the Fuhrer, who ordered Goebbels never to see
Lida Baarová again. Goebbels's lust was strong, but his
devotion to the Fuhrer still stronger. He sighed as a lover; he
obeyed as a Propaganda Minister.
Meanwhile, the jealous
Gustav Froehlich was rumoured to have struck Goebbels in the face,
and challenged him to a duel. Hitler, furious at the scandal, banned
Lida Baarová's films and expelled her from Berlin. Wisely, she
escaped to Prague. As for Goebbels, he restored himself to favour
when he organised Kristallnacht in November 1938, an orgy of
destruction in which thousands of Jewish shops were looted, and
hundreds of synagogues burned.
Lida Baarová was
born Ludmila Babkova in Prague on May 12 1910, and made her first
film, The Career of Pavel Camrda in 1931. Three years later she was
signed up by a German company and cast in Barcarole as the innocent
sexual pawn of squalid male intrigue. Of the other Czech and German
films in which she appeared in the 1930s, Vavra's Virginia and
Krska's A Fiery Summer are the most notable.
Her flight to Prague in
1938 did not long afford security, for in March 1939 the city was
invaded by Hitler's troops. Expelled in 1941, she went to Italy,
where she made several films before the Gestapo returned her to
Prague in 1945. With the return of peace she served 16 months in
prison on account of her Nazi past.
Free again, she found
herself ostracised as an actress; in 1949, for instance, Anton
Walbrook loudly withdrew from a film when required to appear in a
scene with her. Soon after that she withdrew to Argentina. But she
was soon back and appearing in Italian films, including Fellini's I
Vitelloni (1953). In 1958 she moved to Salzburg, where she found
stage work. In 1970, Rainer Werner Fassbinder gave her a part in The
Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.
Long assumed dead, she was
suddenly rediscovered in the 1990s, and in 1995 made a documentary of
her life, Lida Baarová's Bittersweet Memories. Latterly she
suffered from Parkinson's disease. If she ever felt guilt about her
past, she rigorously suppressed it. "There's no doubt that Goebbels
was an interesting character," she observed in 1997, "a charming and
intelligent man and a very good storyteller. You could guarantee that
he would keep a party going with his little asides and
jokes."
But she was not entirely
without regrets. Her involvement with the Nazi elite meant that she
had turned down offers to go to Hollywood. "I could have been as
famous as Marlene Dietrich," she believed. Lida Baarová
married first, in 1949 (dissolved 1956) Jan Kopecky, and secondly, in
1970, Kurt Lundwall, a gynaecologist 20 years her senior.
January 21, 2001
Love triangle: Baarova,
left, gained the affection of Goebbels to the point that he wanted to
divorce his wife, right, but Hitler forbade it
Goebbels
mistress tells tales from the grave
By Peter Conradi
THEIRS was one of the most
dramatic and dangerous love affairs of the Third Reich. A glamorous
Czech actress who became Josef Goebbels's mistress and fled Germany
after his wife denounced them to Hitler has described her turbulent
relationship with the Nazi propaganda chief for the first time.
In her autobiography, The
Sweet Bitterness of My Life, to be published posthumously in Germany
next month, Lida Baarova writes of life in the Nazi upper echelons,
where elegantly dressed ministers mingled with the film world elite.
The actress, who died alone
in poverty in November aged 86, reveals that Goebbels's wife, Magda,
proposed a ménage à trois to save her marriage but
Hitler ordered an end to the two-year affair on the grounds that it
could damage the Nazis' image as guardians of traditional family
values.
It was Hitler who first
fell for Baarova, then 20, during a visit in 1934 to a film set in
Berlin. Three days later she was summoned to tea at the chancellery.
He said she reminded him of somebody both "beautiful and tragic" in
his life. To her horror, she later realised this was Hitler's former
lover and half-niece, Angela Raubal, who was found dead in her Munich
flat in 1931, aged 23, after shooting herself in the heart with a
pistol.
Several more meetings
followed, despite the protests of Gustav Frцhlich, a jealous
actor with whom Baarova was living. But the Fьhrer did not press
himself on her.
Hitler and his half niece,
whom he thought Baarova resembled
She and Goebbels first met
in 1936 during the Berlin Olympics in the city's opulent
Schwanenwerder suburb, where Goebbels had rented a villa near
Frцhlich's. Baarova was attracted immediately.
"His voice seemed to go
straight into me," she said. "I felt a light tingling in my back, as
if his words were trying to stroke my body."
There were other meetings
on Goebbels's yacht Baldur, and he invited her to hear him speak at a
Nazi congress. He promised to touch his face with a white
handkerchief during the speech as a sign of his devotion.
Panicking, Baarova decided
to leave town. But as her train waited at the station, a messenger
arrived with roses and the minister's picture. "He was a master of
the hunt, whom no-body and nothing could escape," she said.
For months Goebbels pursued
her relentlessly, inviting her for trips in his chauffeur-driven
limousine or visits to his log cabin on the shores of Lake Lanke
outside Berlin.
Although their relationship
was platonic for a long time, she tried to hide it from
Frцhlich. When Goebbels rang he left messages as Herr
Mьller and hung up if the actor answered. One winter evening in
the cabin, however, before a blazing fire he kissed her for the first
time, saying: "I have never in my life been so in-flamed with love
for a woman."
They met whenever he could
get away from his wife. Baarova recalled his mood swings
dramatically. Sometimes he amused her with Hitler impressions, at
others he expressed doubts about Nazi ideology.
Rumours of their
relationship spread after Goebbels bailed out one of Baarova's films.
Then Frцhlich arrived home to find them on the road to the
villa. He berated Goebbels and left Baarova soon afterwards.
His impertinence did not go
unpunished. Goebbels later took revenge by removing his exemption
from military service and sending him to war.
In the autumn of 1938,
however, Goebbels had telephoned Baarova, saying he had confessed to
his wife, and wanted the two women to meet. Magda Goebbels was
distraught when they were introduced, and suggested sharing her
husband.
"I am the mother of his
children, I am only interested in this house in which we live," she
said. "What happens outside does not concern me. But you must promise
me one thing: you must not have a child by him."
Goebbels appeared with
gifts of jewellery for both women as if to cement the love triangle.
But Magda told Hitler and Goebbels was summoned to the Fьhrer.
"My wife is a devil," he told Baarova.
Early the next morning he
rang again, weeping. Hitler had refused his request for a divorce and
forbidden him to see her. "I love you, Liduschka," he said. "I cannot
live without you."
The propaganda machine
swung into gear. Newspapers published pictures of the Goebbels
family, and Goebbels rehabilitated himself with Hitler by
orchestrating Kristallnacht, an orgy of violence in November 1938
when Jewish property across Germany was destroyed.
Baarova was called to a
police station and told she was barred from appearing in films or
plays and even from attending social functions. She was pursued by
the Gestapo, who organised hecklers to shout "Whore", when she
defiantly attended the premiere of her film, Der Spieler (The
Player).
Baarova returned to Prague,
disobeying an order from Hitler's adjutant to remain in Germany. She
was on a Nazi blacklist, however, and it became more difficult for
her to work. In 1942 she moved to Italy and resumed her career.
She saw Goebbels one last
time at the 1942 Venice film festival. He ignored her. "He must have
recognised me, but he did not make a single movement," she said. "He
was always the master of self-control."
In 1945 Baarova was
arrested by the Americans and briefly imprisoned for collaboration.
Goebbels and his wife stayed with Hitler in his bunker, taking their
own lives and those of their six children on May 1 as the Russians
swept into Berlin.
After two failed marriages,
her career faded as Czechs refused to forgive her. She continued to
deny the Goebbels relationship until the 1990s, when Richard
Kettermann, a German publisher, encouraged her to write about it.
Although she was in her eighties when they met, Kettermann said last
week he was struck by the warmth she exuded. When she looked back at
her relationship with Goebbels, however, her overwhelming emotion was
regret.
Go to:
Vietnam Medal of Honor Citations
Go to: Obituaries
neil@mishalov.com
© 2000 by Neil
Mishalov
разделы
тренировка память
флюоресцентный краска
электрокардиограф
охота быкова
герб рф
de luxe 5040.11
кислотостойкий краска
доставка окон
лекарство рак
огнестойкий краска
ароматный мир
защитный краска
экстракт корень лопух сух.
кислотостойкий краска
укрепление откос
юр.адрес
кристофер брэнд
сушильный машина electrolux
продажа кофе
купить каболка
банковский сейфовые ячейка
растворитель
сэндвич кофе-бар
купить видеокарту
эфирный антенна funke
билет мхат
вкус цвет
купить ножовка
зиплок
motorola v3i купить
нард скачать
нард короткий
бахила оптом
kyiv apartments service
мурано
универсам красный площадь
купить ломтерезку
электрокамин dimplex model silver (sp4)
li-da