You are bidding on an early, Hand-signed autograph card the actress Johanna Terwin (1884-1962), from 1919 wife of the actor Alexander Moissi (1879-1935).
Real photo card with title "Johanna Terwin, Zurich City Theater."
Signed by hand on the motif side: "Dear Anny Beckmann! Johanna Terwin, Zurich (!) 1909."
Publisher:New Photographic Society Berlin.
Rare motif!
Format: 13.7x8.7cm.
Blank on the back.
Condition: Card slightly bent, stained on the back. bitte bAlso check out the pictures!
Internal note: Ostbhf 23-10
About Johanna Terwin and her future husband Alexander Mossi (source: wikipedia):
Johanna Terwin (actually Johanna Winter, * 18. March 1884 in Kaiserslautern; † 4. January 1962 in Zurich) was a German actress.
Life: She made her debut in 1904 at the Passau City Theater, followed by stage appearances in Zurich and Munich. She had worked in Berlin since 1911. Their venues included the German Theater, the Berlin Theater and the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.
She took on leading roles in Max Reinhardt's Sumurun (title role, 1911), Romeo and Juliet (Juliet, 1912), Hamlet (Ophelia, 1912), George Bernard Shaw's Doctor at the Crossroads (1912), Spring Awakening (1913), Ghosts (1914) , Minna von Barnhelm (1914) and many other pieces. At this time she also appeared in various silent films, including alongside Alexander Moissi, who became her husband in 1919.
In the 1920s she went to Vienna and became a member of the ensemble at the Theater in der Josefstadt. In 1920 and 1921 she embodied the accomplice in Everyman for the first two times at the Salzburg Festival. Her husband Alexander Moissi played the everyman. From then on she only appeared in the cinema occasionally, especially in Austrian films. After the Second World War, she returned to the stage at the Deutsches Theater Göttingen in 1950, and in 1953 she appeared on the Wuppertal stage and guested at the Volkstheater Vienna. After a 15-year absence, she appeared again in Berlin in 1957 in the role of a cocotte in Gigi at the Renaissance Theater.
Filmography
1913: Home and foreigners
1913: The black ticket
1914: The Bathing Nymph
1914: Laugh, Bajazzo!
1915: The false appearance
1915: § 14 BGB
1917: Teacher Matthiesen
1918: Queen of Spades
1918: The eternal doubt
1918: Cain (4 parts)
1932: A thousand for one night
1936: Flowers from Nice
1936: Harvest / The Julika
1937: Premiere
1938: The Restless Girls
1942: Summer Love
1958: Frauensee
Alexander Moissi (Albanian Aleksandër Moisiu, Italian Alessandro Moisi; * 2. April 1879 in Trieste, Austria-Hungary; † 22. March 1935 in Vienna) was an Austrian actor of Albanian origin. Between 1910 and 1930 he was considered the most famous actor in German-speaking countries and also a world star because of his many tours.
Moissi was the protagonist of the modern, torn, morbid person at the beginning of the 20th century. century. His most famous roles were Oswald in Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, Fedja in The Living Corpse of Leo Tolstoy and Everyman in Max Reinhardt's production of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play of the same name in 1920 at Salzburg Cathedral Square.
Biography: Alexander Moissi was born on January 2nd. April 1879 (according to other sources on 2. April 1880) was born as Alessandro Moissi in Trieste, Italy (then Austria-Hungary), as the fifth child of the wealthy Albanian merchant and shipowner Konstantin Moisiu and the Arbëreshe Amalia di Rada. He grew up with his father in the Albanian port city of Durrës (Durazzo) and with his mother in Trieste, attended a boarding school in Graz and moved to Vienna in 1898 as a 19-year-old with little knowledge of German, where he began studying singing. After a year, his free study place was withdrawn and Moissi applied for acting training at the Burgtheater, but was rejected and had to be content with silent roles in the extra series due to his strong Italian accent.
There Moissi was discovered by Josef Kainz in a performance of Molière's Tartuffe. The famous Kainz played the title role, Moissi a mute servant. In the scene together during Tartuffe's first appearance, Kainz looked the young Moissi in the face - and forgot his lines for a few moments. The next day, Kainz spoke up for Moissi with the theater director, Paul Schlenther, saying he had seen the “actor of the future”. Schlenther brought the strange talent to the New German Theater in Prague, where Moissi stayed from 1901 to 1903.
In 1903 Moissi moved to Berlin, where Max Reinhardt discovered him and, despite initial devastating reviews, hired him into his ensemble at the Deutsches Theater. It took a while for Moissi to assert himself. Even in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice with Rudolf Schildkraut, Reinhardt's second major Shakespeare production after A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1905 (where Moissi played Oberon), Moissi as Solanio was mercilessly attacked by the critics. “But Reinhardt's belief in Moissi's abilities could not be shaken. He repeatedly put him on stage in important roles, was not put off by the Italian accent and fought for him until he got his way." (Gusti Adler)
Moissi became a star with Max Reinhardt in Berlin and captivated many with his Italianate style of speech, in which he sang rather than spoke. The poet Franz Werfel called him a magician, for Stefan Zweig his voice was music, Gerhart Hauptmann and Klabund admired him, and Franz Kafka wrote in his diary:
“Round cheeks and yet an angular face. Soft hair, stroked again and again with soft hand movements. Although so many melodies could be heard, the voice seemed to be guided like a light boat in the water, the melody of the verses could not actually be heard. Some words were dissolved by the voice, they were touched so delicately that they jumped up and no longer had anything to do with the human voice..." (Prague, 28. February 1912)
Not everyone could tolerate Moissi's style. The director of the Burgtheater Alfred von Berger said to Hugo Thimig about Moissi in 1910: “I ran out of his Hamlet, the man is so disgusting to me.”
Moissi soon led the life of a real superstar, he dominated the headlines of newspapers and magazines like only Enrico Caruso or Rudolph Valentino , was a heartthrob and adventurer and led a restless and ruinous life. He became the most famous and highest paid stage actor of his time.
In 1914 Moissi went into the First World War as a volunteer on the German side and was taken prisoner. In 1918 he temporarily joined the insurgent Spartacists.
In 1918 Moissi gave a guest performance at the Neue Wiener Bühne, including The Robbers, in which he played Franz Moor, and Hamlet, in which Elisabeth Berger played Ophelia. Alexander Granach was also engaged for the duration of the guest appearance.
In 1920, Max Reinhardt cast Moissi as the first Everyman at the Salzburg Festival. He was also seen in this role in 1922 and again from 1926 to 1931. His wife Johanna Terwin was married in 1921 and 1922. In the interwar period, Moissi became more and more of a star actor, increasingly touring. In Berlin he only appeared as a guest. His acting style was considered antiquated here and could no longer keep up with developments such as expressionism or the political theater of Brecht and Piscator. As an exotic figure, Moissi was loved and hated in Germany and celebrated in the metropolises of Europe and America. In 1933 Moissi left Germany.
Death: Moissi died on the 22nd. March 1935 in Vienna as a result of pneumonia, after a tour of Italy, between filming and rehearsals for a play written for him by Pirandello and translated by his friend Stefan Zweig. On his deathbed, Alexander Moissi received a telegram from Rome offering him Italian citizenship. The Albanians - King Zogu ruled in Tirana at the time - also offered him a passport, with the dubious honor that Moissi would become Zogu's court actor. The question of national affiliation was no longer decided. Moissi died over it.[4] Other authors, however, mention that he was granted Albanian citizenship in 1934. At the funeral service in the Simmering fire hall, the actor Albert Bassermann placed the Iffland ring on Moissi's coffin because he had actually wanted to leave the award to him later. Moissi's urn was later taken to Switzerland and buried in the Morcote cemetery.
Family: His first wife, Marie Urfus, came from Bohemia. She founded the “Maria Moissi Berlin Drama School”, where her husband also taught. They had onee daughter, Beate Moissi. Alexander Moissi had eA second daughter with Herta Hambach, Bettina Moissi, who also became a film actress and married the art dealer and collector Heinz Berggruen in 1959. Moissi's second marriage was to the actress Johanna Terwin in 1919. His other descendants include the investor and art collector Nicolas Berggruen, a grandson, and the actor Gedeon Burkhard, a great-grandson.
Repertoire: Alexander Moissi is considered one of the heroes of acting at the beginning of the 20th century. century. He was Orestes and Oedipus, Danton and Torquato Tasso, Hamlet and Romeo, Faust and Everyman. The brooding, torn characters, inclined towards death, particularly suited him. Death was his trademark. Because no one died on stage as often and as beautifully as Moissi; he presented dying “as an individual art”..
His first star role was Oswald, who was terminally ill with syphilis, in Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts in 1906, in the legendary performance with which Max Reinhardt opened his second venue, the Kammerspiele of the Deutsches Theater. Edvard Munch designed the sets, the cast was: Agnes Sorma (Mrs. Alving), Alexander Moissi (Oswald), Friedrich Kayssler (Manders), Lucie Höflich (Regine) and Max Reinhardt (Engstrand). Moissi played Oswald for more than two decades, often in guest appearances, for example at the Munich Kammerspiele in 1927 (with Therese Giehse as Mother Alving) and even on Broadway in 1929.
Another role in Moissi's life was the suicide Fedja in Leo Tolstoy's Living Corpse: The play premiered in Berlin in 1913; Until his death in 1935, Moissi played this role more than 1,500 times. The role was also his last appearance before his death.
Moissi's repertoire covered the entire Spektrum of European theater literature from ancient Greek tragedy to modern times. Moissi played numerous Shakespearean roles under Reinhardt, including the Fool in King Lear, Jacques in As You Like It, and Prince Heinz in Henry IV. (with Paul Wegener), Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, but also the prince in Lessing's Emilia Galotti, Ricault in Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm, Goethe's Faust and Clavigo (1923 in the Redoutensaal of the Vienna Hofburg).
He also played in premieres by Gerhart Hauptmann (The White Savior), Frank Wedekind (Spring Awakening, 1906), Knut Hamsun (Fetched by the Devil, 1914) and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
In 1911 Moissi was celebrated for his interpretation of Oedipus the King on a tour to Saint Petersburg. This success was followed by numerous other guest tours throughout Europe and North America. Tours have taken him to New York, Moscow, Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and through Europe - with over 1,500 performances worldwide.
In 1920 he was the first to portray the title role in Everyman at the Salzburg Festival, for which he was virtually predestined with his “way of life, his preference for fast cars, villas and a rich love life”. In Salzburg, the Iron Broom, the organ of the anti-Semitic association, launched a real agitation against the actor who was favored by Reinhardt.
In 1926 he played Pirandello's Heinrich IV at the Vienna Volkstheater. There he also played in the Schnitzler premiere of In the Game of Summer Airs in 1929 with Luise Ullrich and Hamlet in a tailcoat in a contemporary Shakespeare interpretation. In 1929, Moissi also performed his legendary Everyman at the Volkstheater, which he had played at the Salzburg Festival under Max Reinhardt. At the Theater in der Josefstadt in 1928 he played Orest in Richard Beer-Hofmann's production of Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris with Helene Thimig.
Films: Moissi made eleven silent films and two sound films, only the last one has survived. A treasure is kept in the Austrian Film Archive in Vienna: Moissi as Fedja, an excerpt from a newsreel, 55 seconds long.
1913 Meier Helmbrecht's escape and end
1913 The black ticket
1913 The Eyes of Ole Brandis, (role: Ole Brandis, young painter)
1915 scenery magic
1915 His only son
1918 Queen of Spades, with Johanna Terwin
1918 The Ring of Three Wishes
1919 Borrowed happiness, with Käthe Dorsch
1919 The Young Goethe (The Son of the Gods), with Käthe Dorsch (role: Goethe)
1919 Between Death and Life, with Maria Zelenka
1920 Figaro's Wedding, with Hella Moja, Eduard von Winterstein, Vera Schwarz, Gertrude Welcker (role: Figaro)
1920 The Night of Queen Isabeau, directed by Robert Wiene, with Fritz Kortner (role: King Charles VI)
1921 Kean, with Heinrich George, Camilla Horn
1929 The Royal Box (USA), with Camilla Horn (role: Edmund Kean)
1935 Lorenzino de' Medici Role: Lorenzino de' Medici
1935 Barcarole with Lída Baarová, Gustav Fröhlich, Willy Birgel (guest appearance)
theatre
1913: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Emilia Galotti (Prince) – Director: Max Reinhardt (Deutsches Theater Berlin)
Quotes
Felix Holländer: Let's remember that Reinhardt's heyday is unthinkable without Alexander Moissi.
Richard Beer-Hofmann: This great actor is given power like no other before, with an art that focuses on the senses and conveys the supernatural.
Ossip Dymow: In my memory Moissi will always remain as a wonderful embodiment of youth, strength and masculine magic, incomparable in his cruel carelessness.
Commemoration: In Berlin, Moissistraße in Treptow-Köpenick, Adlershof district (between Radicke- and Otto-Franke-Straße) commemorates Moissi, and a memorial plaque is to be attached to Moissi's home (Kantstraße 75 in Charlottenburg).
There is an alley in Vienna-Kaisermühlen that bears the name of the actor who died in Vienna. There is also a statue of the artist there. There is a monument to Moissi in Vienna-Donaustadt.
In Salzburg-Alpensiedlung, Alexander-Moissi-Strasse commemorates his work.
Moissi is revered in Albania as an important actor in the country. The University of Durrës, the drama school in Tirana and the Durrës Theater bear Moissi's name. In Durrës there is an Aleksander Moisiu Foundation, dedicated to maintaining his legacy, and an Aleksandër Moisiu Museum. His 60th The anniversary of his death was celebrated in 1995 with a year of acting.
On the 17th In August 2020, the artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block for Alexander Moissi in front of the House for Mozart in Salzburg.