Most people will know the actress Heidemarie Schneider as the community sister in Loriot‘s film “Pappa ante portas“, but her important artistic achievements lie in her collaboration with the Defa director Evelyn Schmidt, in whose film “The Bicycle” (1982) she played the leading role played. Now the theater criticism portal reports nachtkritik.de citing the private environment that Heidemarie Schneider died on November 2nd after a long illness.
“The Bicycle” tells the heartbreaking and, for the GDR, rarely socially critical story about the untrained single mother Susanne, who reports her bicycle as stolen to the insurance company and treats herself to a can of pineapple from the deli with the damage money: 12.50 marks.
Also critical was “Karla” (1965), the first film in which Heidemarie Schneider took part at the age of 20. Ulrich Plenzdorf wrote the script and Hermann Zschoche directed. Jutta Hoffmann played the main role, the young, committed teacher Karla Blum, who not only wants to teach the twelfth graders, who are hardly younger than her, the approved school material, but also lights the light of critical thinking. The film, like so many from this year of production, fell to the infamous XI. Plenum of the Central Committee of the SED fell victim and only experienced its premiere in 1990, after the failure of socialism on German soil. It’s a shame, maybe with more films like this and an open and free society it would have worked better.
A break in the biography
For those involved, the ban meant a turning point in their biographies and artistic careers. Jutta Hoffmann, Rolf Hoppe and Inge Keller were able to continue their careers, but who knows what would have happened to others such as Jürgen Hentschel and Heidemarie Schneider after this prominent and artistically convincing work.
Heidemarie Schneider, born in Görlitz in 1945, led a full life as an actress, played many small roles on television and for the screen, appeared at the major Berlin theaters – the Volksbühne, the Schaubühne and the Deutsches Theater – and passed on her knowledge as an acting teacher. For the longest time she was associated with the Thalia Theater Halle and especially with the director Annegret Hahn. She will be buried on Friday at 1 p.m. in the village cemetery in Metzelthin (Templin).
