Thimig, Helene

(1889-1974)

   Actress. Thimig intended to work with the Burgtheater in Vienna, where her father Hugo Thimig had been an established actor for decades and became its director from 1914 to 1918. Her father, however, was not impressed with her talent, and so in 1908 she left Vienna for Meiningen, where she worked for three years. In 1912 Thimig joined the Royal Theater company in Berlin, where she remained until 1917, at which time she joined Max Reinhardt's company at the Deutsches Theater. When Reinhardt took over the Theater in der Josephstadt in her native Vienna, she returned there frequently to play a variety of roles, both in the modern and in the classical repertoire. Among her most noteworthy roles for Reinhardt were Ophelia in Hamlet, Rosalind in As You Like It, Luise Miller in Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love), the title role in Friedrich Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans), Maria in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Clavigo, Glaube in Hugo von Hoffmansthal's Jedermann (Everyman) at the Salzburg Festival, the title role in Gerhart Hauptmann's Dorothea Angermann, and Klärchen in Goethe's Egmont.

   Thimig married Reinhardt in 1932 and emigrated with him to the United States when he was forced out of Germany. After his death in 1943, she worked in more than a dozen Hollywood films; returning to Europe in 1946, she began working at the Salzburg Festival and in Vienna. As a member of the Burgtheater company, she began playing older character parts, such as in the Austrian premieres of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, playing Amanda, and Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding, as the Mother. Among her many awards were the Josef Kainz Medallion and the Salzburg Festival Prize.