Niemann-Raabe, Hedwig

(1844-1905)

   Actress. Niemann-Raabe was one of the finest performers in 19th-century German theater, and if such witnesses as Otto Brahm and colleague Ludwig Barnay are to be believed, she had the ability to transcend the normal limits of performance in almost any role she attempted. Nie-mann-Raabe enjoyed a career far lengthier than did most actresses of her day, beginning in childhood as Carla Eugenia in Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos. She worked steadily for the next five decades as a member of German companies in venues as disparate as Amsterdam in the west, Moscow in the east, Vienna in the south, and Hamburg in the north. She toured throughout Europe on numerous occasions. Niemann-Raabe began as an ingenue and in her 40s began doing character parts; Brahm said her Frankziska in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm was the finest he had ever seen, largely because she eschewed the "artificial drollery" attempted by most of her contemporaries in the role. In some ways, Niemann-Raabe presaged the Naturalist emphasis in female roles by Gerhart Hauptmann, for example, Mother Wolff in Der Biberpelz (The BeaverCoat) and Frau Wermelskirch in Fuhrmann Henschel (TeamsterHenschel). In her 50s and 60s, she played the Salondame with such humor and self-parody that Barnay wished he could enroll every young actress then just beginning in the profession to witness this "great artist" at work. Niemann-Raabe's artistry did not, however, extend to the plays of Henrik Ibsen. Brahm's admiration of her and his concomitant advocacy of the Norwegian playwright notwithstanding, her refusal to play the ending of A Doll's House as written caused a furor in Berlin, where she was scheduled to appear as Nora at the Deutsches Theater. Ibsen initially refused to alter the play, so she told him and Adolph L'Arronge she would change the ending of the play on her own and remain in the house with Torvald and the children. Ibsen relented, albeit reluctantly, and wrote the "German ending" for her. She in turn relented soon thereafter and agreed to play Nora as written.