Sandrock, Adele

(1863-1937)

   Actress. In her late 50s, Sandrock became one of the most popular and recognizable comic actresses in Germany, though her training as an actress had begun nearly a half-century earlier, taking acting lessons as a child from her mother, who had been a German actress before her marriage to a Dutch physician. Sandrock made her debut at age 15 at Berlin's Urania theater club in Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's Mutter und Sohn (Mother and Son). By 1880 she had joined the Meininger troupe, touring with that company for five years. After engagements thereafter in small Viennese theaters and at the Deutsches Theater of Budapest, she returned to Vienna in triumph with an 1889 production of

   Alexandre Dumas filés sensational The Clemenceau Case at the Theater an der Wien.

   Sandrock remained in Vienna for the next decade, at the end of which she worked in several Burgtheater productions with her sister Wilhelmine Sandrock (1862-1948). Among the major roles for which she became well known were Magda in Hermann Suder-mann's Heimat, Rebecca West in Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm; and the title roles in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Emilia Galotti, Friedrich Schiller's Maria Stuart, and Franz Grillparzer's Sappho. She lived what was then considered a scandalous life, conducting numerous liaisons with prominent men, and Arthur Schnitzler was reported to have fashioned several disreputable ladies in his plays after her. He wrote the role of Fanny Theren in Das Märchen (The Fairy Tale) for her, but it was not nearly as successful as had been her Christine in his Liebelei (Loving).

   At the height of her fame in Vienna, Sandrock left to go on tour throughout Europe, but the tour ended in disaster when Sandrock attempted to play the title role in Hamlet and by 1904 she was bankrupt. She found work periodically in Berlin beginning in 1905, and in 1910 Max Reinhardt signed her to an extended contract. In the same year she began her film career, performing in several short films every year until 1920, when she began playing Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. So wildly popular were her performances of Lady Bracknell that her career experienced an upward trajectory similar to the one in 1898, and her roles in silent films during the 1920s increased proportionally. When a new technology made sound films possible in Germany, Sandrock's rich baritone became familiar to millions who had never seen her in the theater—and her career took off again. Among her hit movies of the 1930s were Der Kongress tanzt (The Dancing Congress), Der tolle Bomberg (That Crazy Bomberg), Morgenrot (Dawn), Die englische Heirat (The English Marriage), Flitterwochen (Honeymoon), Die grosse und die kleine Welt (The Big and the Little World), and shortly before she died, Der Favorit der Kaiserin (The Empress 's Favorite).