(1911-2002)
Actress. Best known as one of the most popular and glamorous stars of the Third Reich, Hoppe's career began in 1930 and continued for 70 years. Her work with directors as chronologically disparate as Max Reinhardt, Gustaf Gründgens, Boleslaw Barlog, Robert Wilson, and Claus Peymann was among the most remarkable of any actress in the German theater's history. She frankly admitted her knowledge of the Nazi regime's terror, doing little to dispel persistent misgivings about her even as she continued to act on stage, screen, and television for decades after 1945. Her candor extended to discussions of the ways she and her colleagues socialized with Hitler, lending some support to arguments that she allowed herself, as did many other German actresses, to be used for the sake of career advancement.
Hoppe's career entered its upward trajectory when she married Gründgens in 1936.She was at her best under Gründgens's aegis, not only because he was so powerful but also because her work accorded with popular taste. She was often featured in highly publicized premieres of new comedies or in lavish Shakespeare productions at the State Theater, and Hoppe's star turns in each of them reflected her appeal among audiences. It helped of course that "of all our actresses, Hoppe [embodies] the purest of North German types in her racial uniqueness: blonde, candid, and Nordic, with their dry sense of humor, caustic and genuine" (F. O., review of the film Krach um Iolan-the, Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, 20 September 1934). She was a radiant example of what the Bund deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls) had in mind when it declared that "a girl's beaming health reveals an inner harmony that is the fulfillment of our striving for beauty" (Friedemann Beyer, Die UFA-Stars im Dritten Reich [Munich: Heyne, 1991], 32). Hoppe projected an energetic, girlish aura in much of her work during the Third Reich.
In the immediate postwar period, Hoppe suffered a complete physical and emotional breakdown, but by the early 1950s she returned to the stage, making a speciality of playing women with difficulties similar to her own—especially American women. Her Blanche Dubois in Berlin's first German-language production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire gave a singular stamp to her comeback, and she reprised the role several times in numerous productions through the decade. Her 1959 performance as film diva Alexandra del Lago in Sweet Bird of Youth proved equally appealing, as did her Georgie Elgin in Clifford Odets's The Country Girl, Deborah Harford in Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet, and Agnes in Edward Al-bee's A Delicate Balance. In the 1970s and 1980s she worked extensively in new plays by then-emerging playwrights, among them Edward Bond, Tankred Dorst, Heiner Müller, and especially Thomas Bernhard. Hoppe appeared in three of Bernhard's world premieres, including Die Jagdgesellschaft (The Hunting Party) and the controversial Heldenplatz (Heroes' Square), under the direction of Pey-mann. In 1990 she played the title role in King Lear under the direction of Robert Wilson in Frankfurt am Main.