Werbezirk, Gisela (1875–1956)

Austrian actress and cabaret performer . Name variations: Giselle Werbesik. Born in Pressburg (Poszonyi), Hungary (now Bratislava, Slovakia), on April 8, 1875; died in Hollywood, California, on April 16, 1956; married Hans Piffl; children: son, Heinrich.

A Viennese superstar of stage and screen for several decades before 1938, Gisela Werbezirk was an unattractive woman with an extraordinary stage presence and inborn sense of dramatic timing. Born in 1875 into a Jewish family in Bratislava (then called Pressburg or Pozsonyi), she moved to nearby Vienna to try her luck on the stage. Werbezirk quickly became a star, with her mastery of the nuances of language earning her praise from the writer Oskar Maurus Fontana who proclaimed: "Werbezirk belongs to Vienna. She needs the climate of this city, its glory and sufferings, its people and its language."

Werbezirk's reputation in Vienna was based on her ability to play the roles of ordinary women whose lives, often tragic and poverty stricken, tested them to the utmost, but who nevertheless found the strength to survive and indeed prevail. For decades, the Viennese public loved her and looked forward to both new roles and those she had made her own. With the looming threat to Vienna from Hitler's Germany, Werbezirk emigrated to the United States in 1938, changing her stage name to Giselle Werbesik. She acted in a number of Hollywood films, including Anna Seghers ' The Seventh Cross.

sources:

Ahrensfeldt, Fritz. "Die Werbezirk," in Neue Freie Presse [Vienna]. July 12, 1925.

Dachs, Robert, Walter Öhlinger and Adelbert Schusser, eds. Sag beim Abschied … Wiener Publikumslieblinge in Bold & Ton. 158. Aussetellung des Historischen Museums der Stadt Wien in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Jüdischen Museum der Stadt Wien, 23. Jänner bis 22. März 1992. Vienna: Eigenverlag der Museen der Stadt Wien, 1992.

"Gisela Werbezirk. Von akademischem Maler Robert Fuchs," in Neue Freie Presse [Vienna]. September 24, 1937.

Horak, Jan-Christopher. "The Other Germany in Zinnemann's The Seventh Cross (1944)," in Eric Rentschler, ed. German Film & Literature. NY: Methuen, 1986, pp. 117–131.

"Jewish Club of 1933: Cyclus der Künstlerabende," in Aufbau [New York]. Vol. 8, no. 2. January 9, 1942, p. 15.

Salten, Felix. "Die Frau Werbezirk," in Neue Freie Presse [Vienna]. July 1, 1923.

Torberg, Friedrich. "Die Werbezirk ist tot," in Neuer Kurier [Vienna]. April 23, 1956, p. 5.

"Werbezirk, Gisela," in Frithjof Trapp, et al., eds., Hand-buch des deutschsprachigen Exiltheaters 1933–1945, Vol. 2: Biographisches Lexikon der Theaterkünstler. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1999, Part 2, pp. 1012–1013.

Wicclair, Walter. Von Kreuzburg bis Hollywood. Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1975.

John Haag , Associate Professor of History, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia