Drews, Berta

(1901-1987)

   Actress. Drews had three distinct phases to her career: the Weimar period, in which she regularly played leading roles in some of the most popular plays in the German contemporary repertoire; the Third Reich, when she worked extensively with her husband Heinrich George; and the postwar period, playing mature parts while appearing in movies and television. Drews studied at Max Reinhardt's acting school in Berlin and began working in Stuttgart. With Otto Falckenberg in Munich, she played Liza Doolittle in Pygmalion, Pirate Jenny in Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), and Lulu and Countess Geschwitz in Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays, along with many other roles by Carl Zuckmayer, Bertolt Brecht, and Ferdinand Bruckner. Drews returned to her native Berlin to join the Volksbühne company and married George in 1932. They worked together at the Schiller Theater in Berlin and in films until 1944. Soviet troops arrested both of them in 1945 and placed them in detention. Drews resumed performing in 1948, first at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin. Among the best of the mature character parts of this period was her Dr. Mathilde von Zahnd in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker (The Physicists). The best-known film in which she appeared was Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum), which won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 1980.