Brigitte Horney


Brigitte Horney was a German theatre and film actress. Best remembered was her role as Empress Katherine the Great in the 1943 version of the UFA film version of Baron Münchhausen, directed by Josef von Báky, with Hans Albers in the title role.

Life and work

Brigitte Horney was the daughter of noted psychoanalyst Karen Horney and grew up in Dahlem, as of 1920 a locality of Berlin. She was, for more than a decade, engaged with Berlin's Volksbühne. When she accepted the starring role in the highly popular film Love, Death and the Devil, a new star was born with the Leitmotif song "So oder so ist das Leben".
Horney was a good friend of the actor Joachim Gottschalk and appeared in four films with him. Although Gottschalk had fallen from favor with Nazi officials, Horney attended Gottschalk's funeral, regardless of the political and career implications of doing so.
After the Second World War she became an American citizen, but continued to visit Germany frequently, where she had a house in Bavaria. She married the eminent Jewish art historian Hanns Swarzenski, a leading authority on German Romanesque manuscripts. She continued to work in films and television until her death in 1988.

Selected filmography

Film