Angelika Schrobsdorff


Angelika Schrobsdorff was a German writer and actress.

Life

Schrobsdorff's mother Else Kirschner was an assimilated Jew, whose first marriage was to the author Fritz Schwiefert. Schwiefert's most famous play was Marquerite durch 3, in 1930. Else Kirschner's second husband was Erich Schrobsdorff, Angelika Schrobsdorff's father, a member of the wealthy Berlin bourgeoisie.
Schrobsdorff grew up in Berlin and in 1939 fled, with her mother and sister Bettina, to Sofia, Bulgaria, where she remained until the end of the war. Her grandmother Minna Kirschner was murdered in Theresienstadt. Her grandfather Daniel Kirschner died of pneumonia in a Berlin hospital. In 1947, Schrobsdorff returned to Germany. In 1971 she married the French film-maker Claude Lanzmann, with whom she subsequently lived in Paris. Later she lived in Munich for a few years before emigrating to Israel. She lived in Jerusalem until early 2006, in a house on the Green Line near the Old City.
Schrobsdorff's first novel, "Die Herren" caused a scandal and made her famous. She has published a dozen additional books, several of them about Bulgaria. Her memoir of her mother, "Du bist nicht so wie andre Mütter" was a best-seller and was also made into a movie for television. It appeared in English under the title "You are not Like Other Mothers".
Schrobsdorff was also an actress; she appeared in "Der Ruf" and in several films and television programs about her own life. One of the most famous ones is the German documentary of Bulgarian film-maker Christo Bakalski named "Bulgaria of all Places".
Schrobsdorff died on 30 July 2016 in Berlin, Germany at the age of 88. She is buried in the Jewish cemetery Weißensee Berlin.

Works