The Roles of PAULA WESSELY

The exhibition “The Roles of Paula Wessely – A Reflection of Her Self” will document the complete oeuvre of this outstanding actress who occupied a unique position in 20^th century German-speaking theatre.

She began her career with so-called light-hearted roles, mainly playing pretty young maids at the Deutsche Volkstheater. Next she went to the Deutsche Theater inPraguefor her “apprentice years”, which were followed by her celebrated engagement at the Theater an der Josefstadt and the Burgtheater inVienna. In addition, she gave acclaimed guest performances at other German-speaking theatres, for example inBerlin– her Rose Bernd at the Deutsche Theater was a triumph – andSalzburg, as well as acting in films. The latter she started in 1936 and her performances on the silver screen were greatly influenced by her stage roles; they still inform our image of her, even though they show only a few of the facets that make up the actress Paula Wessely.

The roles Paula Wessely played in public proved to be of seminal importance. The exhibition aims to document how she herself understood, emphasized and varied these roles, as well as how they, in time, became politically charged - which was to have fatal consequences.

For the first time, the exhibition focuses on the importance of her early patrons and supporters, foremost among them Rudolf Beer, Karlheinz Martin, Leopold Kramer, Emil Geyer, and the critic, Ludwig Ullmann – all of them victims of the Nazis. Ullmann was instrumental in defining Paula Wessely, and his judgment of her art remains valid today. A central point in his appreciation of her acting was her acclaimed „naturalness“, something already remarked upon when she was only a fifteen-year-old girl. The two counterpoints, naturalness and artificiality – a polarity that remains, in a way, one of the central questions of all art – would also feature prominently during the 1980’s both in the controversial discussions on Paul Wessely’s participation in the propaganda film “Heimkehr”, and in Elfriede Jelinek’s play “Burgtheater”.

Bilder zur und in der Ausstellung