Hedvig Raa-Winterhjelm

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Hedvig Raa-Winterhjelm
Born	Charlotta Forssman 1838 Sweden
Died	1907 (age ca 69)
Other name(s)	Charlotta Raa
Spouse(s)	Fritiof Raa (first husband)

Hedvig Raa-Winterhjelm, née Charlotte Forssman, (1838-1907), was a Swedish actor active in Sweden, Norway and Finland. She played a great importance in Finnish theatre history as a pioneer in the cultural development on the Finnish stage when she became the first actor in Finland to pronounce her lines in the Finnish language. While her importance in her own home-country was small, she became one of the most important actors in Finnish history.

[edit] Biography

Hedvig Raa-Winterhjelm was born in Sweden under the name Charlotte Forssman, and after having been educated at Dramatens elevskola in Stockholm the years 1854-1856, she was employed on the theatre Mindre Teatern in Stockholm 1860-1863, before she started touring with travelling theatre-companies in both Sweden and Finland. The competition with Sweden's leading prima donna Elise Jakobsson-Hwasser made her mowe to Finland, were she accepted a position at the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki, and became this theatre's leading actress within romantic tragedys between 1866 and 1872, becoming one of this newly founded theatre's first stars with her husband Fritiof Raa; the theatre, the first real theatre of Helsinki, had ben founded in 1860 but burned down in 1863 and oppened again in 1866.

In Helsinki, she was an instructor at the newly founded Finnish theatre-school from 1868, were she worked to introduce the Finnish language on stage. In the 1860s, the Finnish language was not spoken on the official stages in Finland; Finland had been a part of Sweden until 1808-1809, and Swedish was the second language in Finland, the language of the upper-classes and the language spoken on stage. Most actors in Finland were also either from Sweden, or from Finland, but with Swedish as their mother- language. Under the Russian rule, however, a wave of antionalism swept over Finland, and Hedvig's initiative was a part of this cultural wave. Although she was from Sweden herself, she felt that there should be a theater in the Finnish language. This was not appreciated by the authoritys, who reacted tho her initiative by closing down the whole school in 1869. She answered by pronouncing her lines in the next play she participated in, Lea by Aleksis Kivi, in the Finnish language, thereby becoming the first actor in Finland to say her lines in the Finnish language on a Finnish stage on an official theatre. She continued by becoming the first actor to play Ofelia and lady Macbeth in Finnish.

Hedvig founded two stages in Finland; one Swedish stage in 1866, and one Finnish in 1872. After the last one was founded, however, the Finnish (Swedish-speaking) theatre forbid her to take assignments in Finnish, and as her first husband, a Norwegian alcoholic died with large debths, she left Finland with a travelling company and arived with it to Oslo in Norway in 1872. It was now that she took the first-name Hedvig.

In 1874, she remaried a Norwegian who forbid her to take any long-term assignments, and she continued her career as a ”guest-artist” and toured under this title in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, were she was particularly noted as an Ibsen-interpetator; she toured around Norway 1876-1878 and i 1883, she toured as Mrs Alving in Ibsens Gengångare in Helsingborg, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo.

Hedvig Raa-Winterhjelm was also active as a translator of plays, and she was also an instructor and a teacher of drama, both in private-tutoring and in Högre lärarinneseminariet in Stockholm, were she tutored until 1906.