Olga Chekhova

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Olga Tchechowa

Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova or Tchechowa (Russian: Ольга Константиновна Чехова, (14 April 1897, Tbilisi – 9 March 1980, Berlin) was a Russian actress who made a stunning career in the cinema of the Third Reich.

Born Olga Knipper, she was the daughter of Konstantin Knipper, an imperial minister and the niece and namesake of Olga Knipper (Anton Chekhov's wife), both of whom were Lutherans of ethnic German descent. She went to school in Tsarskoye Selo but, after watching Eleonora Duse act, joined a studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. There she met the great actor Mikhail Chekhov (Anton's nephew) in 1915 and married him the same year. (Thus, the niece of Anton Chekhov's wife became the wife of Anton Chekhov's nephew.) Their daughter, also named Olga, was born in 1916.

Two years after the October Revolution, Chekhova divorced her husband but kept his name. She managed to get a permission to leave Russia and came to Berlin in 1920. Her first cinema role was in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau silent movie 'Schloss Vogelöd' 1921. She also played in Max Reinhardt's productions at UFA, the same studio's where Fritz Lang directed Metropolis. She made the successful transition from silent film to talkies. In the 1930s, she rose to become one of the brightest stars of the Third Reich and was admired by Adolf Hitler (who did not know that Chekhova's ex-husband Mikhail Chekhov was half Jewish). A published photograph of her sitting beside Hitler at a reception gave the leaders of the Soviet intelligence service the impression that she had close contacts with Hitler. In fact she had more contact with the Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels who was referring to her in his diaries as "eine charmante Frau" ('a charming lady'). Ironically, Soviet archives revealed that she was in fact a Communist spy.

During World War II her acting career was less successful; her one film made in Hollywood was unpopular, largely because her accent was too strong. After the war she continued to make films and largely retired from acting in 1955, publishing a book of memoirs and launched a cosmetics company. Her correspondence with Olga Knipper and Alla Tarasova was printed posthumously.

[edit] Soviet agent

KGB archives made partially public in the 90's show that Chekhova was a Soviet "sleeper" agent recruited in the late 20's by her brother Lev Knipper, an active OGPU - NKVD (Soviet secret police) agent. It is believed that her role was to help her brother in Hitler assassination plot. In 1945, after Berlin was taken by the Red Army, Chekhova was flown to Moscow for a few days of interrogations. She returned to Berlin in June 1945.