Leopold Museum Presents the Legendary Actress Tilla Durieux

17.10.2022

The first large-scale exhibition on the famous star of the theater follows the traces of a scintillating personality through diverse portraits

The Leopold Museum is dedicating the first comprehensive exhibition to the celebrated star of the theater and film Tilla Durieux (1880-1971). Durieux was a modern woman of the 1920s who was politically active and whose roles were as varied as the list of artists who portrayed her. Among them were Auguste Renoir, Lovis Corinth, Franz von Stuck, Max Slevogt, August Gaul, Emil Orlik, Ernst Barlach, Olaf Gulbransson, Max Oppenheimer, Oskar Kokoschka and Charley Toorop, as well as the photographers Frieda Riess, Sasha Stone, Lotte Jacobi and Mary Duras. The presentation Tilla Durieux. A Witness to a Century and Her Roles explores the fascination the Vienna-born and Berlin-based actress held already for her contemporaries.

“Aside from the personality of Tilla Durieux, her changeful biography, her social and political commitment and her exemplariness as a modern woman of the 1920s, there is also an important art historical aspect to this presentation: Rarely has any one person been portrayed as frequently and in so many different media over a period of around 70 years. Based on the depictions of Tilla Durieux, we might tell the story of Modernist portraiture.”

Daniela Gregori, curator of the exhibition

A Star is Born and First Private Portraits

Tilla Durieux was born as Ottilie Helene Angela Godeffroy into a solid middle-class Viennese family. After training as an actress in her hometown, and stints in Olmütz [present-day Olomouc] and Breslau [present-day Wroclaw], she made it to Berlin to play under Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater. As part of Reinhardt’s famous theater ensemble, she received small roles, until she filled in for the celebrated star Gertrude Eysoldt (1870-1955) and gave a brilliant performance in the title role in Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. This marked the birth of the legendary stage persona Tilla Durieux. Over the years, she performed in all the major European theaters and liked to take on challenging roles – not only on stage but, from 1914, also in silent movies. In 1902, Durieux met her first husband, the painter and graphic artist Eugen Spiro (1874–1972). The exhibition at the Leopold Museum shows how the artist created personal portraits of his wife in a private setting, capturing intimate moments of happiness and togetherness. However, the couple divorced in 1905 after Durieux had met the art dealer and publisher Paul Cassirer.

Circle of Artists Surrounding Cassirer and Durieux – Creation of Numerous Portrait Commissions

Cassirer, who from 1910 was Durieux’s second husband, hailed from a wealthy and influential family. He nurtured the ambitious actress’s talents and introduced her to Berlin’s art and literary circles. This illustrious group included numerous artists, as well as the actress Tilly Wedekind and the playwright Frank Wedekind, the pianist Leo Kestenberg, the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, the author Heinrich Mann, the collector and subversive chronicler Harry Graf Kessler, the publisher Samuel Fischer, the art writers Julius Elias, Julius Meier-Graefe and Max Osborn, as well as the critic Alfred Kerr. In Berlin, Cassirer and Durieux hosted big soirées, and invited artists to share their summer sojourns on the Dutch coast. The couple continued to surround themselves with artists and intellectuals even in their Swiss exile from 1917.

“Cassirer commissioned numerous artists to create portraits of his wife, though they were not always too pleased with these commissions. Oskar Kokoschka seemed to have carried out his benefactor and art dealer’s request with some reluctance, while Max Oppenheimer and the actress initially also had difficulties finding an appropriate pose in this somewhat oppressive situation. Besides, Tilla Durieux preferred to entrust her likeness to women artists.”

Daniela Gregori, curator of the exhibition

When she was portrayed by Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), who at the time of the sittings was already gravely ill, Tilla Durieux was deeply moved by her conversations with the artist, whose portrait of the actress comes to the exhibition as a loan from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Over time, Durieux became close with Ernst Barlach (1870-1938) whose sculptures are also shown in the exhibition at the Leopold Museum.

Role Portraits and Theater Photographs, Successful Stagings in the Press and the Downsides of Media Attention

Posing in theater roles or plain clothes came with the territory of being an actress. In case of the various role portraits as Salome or Potiphar’s Wife, which are shown in the Leopold Museum’s presentation, the executing artists captured Durieux while she was playing. For the different versions of Circe by Franz von Stuck (1863–1928) – which are also included in the exhibition – the actress posed in the studio. With her growing success, Tilla Durieux became a person in the public eye. She staged herself as a woman of the world, conveyed wishful images worth emulating, and afforded intimate insights into her life. In the 1920s, she became the paragon of the “New Woman”. Artists like Charley Toorop, Martel Schwichtenberg and the photographers Lotte Jacobi and Frieda Riess captured Durieux as a representative of a modernized female image. But Durieux also suffered the downsides of the media’s attention: Her marriage to Cassirer was shaped by conflicts. When she filed for divorce in 1926, Paul Cassirer attempted to take his own life and died shortly afterwards. His tragic death was made into a scandal, and the actress was cast in the role of a fatal avenging angel and withdrew from the stage for a while. Already during the time leading up to Cassirer’s suicide, the industrialist Ludwig Katzenellenbogen (1877-1943) offered her emotional support, and in 1930 became Durieux’s third husband.

Social and Political Commitment, Renewed Exile during World War II

Tilla Durieux remained active as an actress until the onset of the National Socialist’s regime of terror in Germany. Her commitment extended not only to art but also to social and political issues: Before World War I, she recited literary classics in Berlin’s working-class districts accompanied by Leo Kestenberg (1882-1962). She further offered financial support to Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) during the latter’s stint in prison. Amidst the turmoil of the Munich Soviet Republic, she hid the writer and socialist revolutionary Ernst Toller (1893-1939). During World War I, Cassirer and Durieux hosted a “lunch table for impecunious artists”. Together with Ludwig Katzenellenbogen, she sponsored the avant-gardist theater director Erwin Piscator (1893-1966). Following her escape from fascist Germany, she participated in the resistance movement from exile in Zagreb. Like her first two husbands, Katzenellenbogen, too, was of Jewish descent; from 1933, the stages of their flight included Prague, Ascona, Opatija – where the couple ran Hotel Cristallo – and finally Zagreb where parts of Durieux’s collection are still kept today at the local municipal museum. The actress gave guest performances in countries she was still allowed to visit and taught at the Salzburg Mozarteum. Despite several attempts, the couple did not manage to escape to the US. In Durieux’s absence, Katzenellenbogen was deported to Berlin where he died in 1944.

Late Roles, Performances and Durieux’s Legacy

From 1952, Durieux tentatively started to appear in Berlin theaters once more, and in 1955 returned to Germany. Until shortly before her death, she continued to work for film, radio, television and the theater. She reconstructed her former collection, traveled to exhibitions which showed her portraits and gave lectures and readings from her memoirs. The Grande Dame of the German theater died on 21st February 1971 at the age of 90 in Berlin. Having organized her estate, Durieux determined how her remarkable personality is reconstructed today.

Exhibition Opening

The large-scale exhibition on Tilla Durieux was opened by the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger. The celebratory event was attended by the Leopold Museum Private Foundation’s board member Danielle Spera, Arp Museum Director Julia Wallner, Dom Museum Wien Director Johanna Schwanberg, the head of Photoinstitut Bonartes Monika Faber, the Director of the Kunsthaus Zug  Matthias Haldemann, the Leopold Museum’s Commercial Director Moritz Stipsicz, the CEO of Christie's Österreich Angela Baillou accompanied by the entrepreneur Johannes Baillou, the artists Xenia Hausner and Markus Schinwald, Elisabeth Stein (CEO Styria Buchverlage), Der Standard editor Oscar Bronner and Andrea Bronner, the lenders Sabine Lutt-Freund and Hagen Freund, the family of Susanne Ibach, Barbara Rauck and Michael Rauck, the actresses Anne Bennent and Sylvia Eisenberger-Futterknecht, the collectors Christa Kamm and Waltraud Leopold, Doris Krumpl (Dorotheum), Leopold Birstinger, the Vice-President of the Association of Friends of the Leopold Museum, attorney Thomas Mondl, Pia Schreier, CEO of the Association of Friends of the Leopold Museum, the graphic designer Nele Steinborn, the art historians Manja Wilkens and Hans Körner (Düsseldorf University), Sigrid Ingenohl (ZKM Karslruhe) and Univ. Prof. Rainer Metzger (State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe), the catalogue authors Hannah Reisinger and Aline Marion Steinwender, the theater scholar Peter Jammerthal (Freie Universität Berlin), the gallery owner Alfred Knecht (Galerie Knecht und Burster, Karlsruhe), Alexander Kriz (OMV Sponsoring Manager) and Katrin Duscher (OMV Event Manager), the curator Vitus H. Weh, Maribel Königer (Erste Foundation), Sebastian Krebitz (WOMAN), and many others.

The presentation Tilla Durieux. A Witness to a Century and Her Roles comprises around 233 works, including 14 paintings, 81 works on paper and 84 photographs. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Stephan Dröschel, Daniela Gregori, Hannah Reisinger and Aline Marion Steinwender, as well as a foreword by Hans-Peter Wipplinger.

The exhibition was created in cooperation with the Georg Kolbe Museum, where the Berlin version of the presentation will be shown from May 2023, and the Archives of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, which has housed the actress’s estate since 1977.

Link to the webpage Tilla Durieux

 

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