Ruth Landshoff

Ruth Landshoff-Yorck (1904–1966) was a German-American actress and writer. She was born in 1904^[1] in Berlin as Ruth Levy, later Ruth Landshoff, to engineer Edward Levy and opera singer Else Landshoff. She came from a middle class Jewish family and grew up in Berlin. Her uncle was the publisher Samuel Fischer.^[2] She was given the name Ruth Yorck von Wartenburg after marrying Count David Yorck von Wartenburg in 1930. They divorced in 1937.

Landshoff's first appearance in a film was in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), in which she played the role of Ruth. She also made a brief appearance in The Search (1922), a silent film by Carl Theodor Dreyer.^[2] After attending Reinhardt's acting school, Landshoff turned to stage acting. She made appearances in Berlin, Leipzig, and Vienna before giving up acting. From 1926 to 1930, before marrying Yorck, she was in a relationship with playwright en screenwriter Karl Vollmöller who was 26 years her senior. One of her closest friends in Berlin was Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach.

In 1933 she emigrated from Nazi-Germany to France, then to the United Kingdom, then to Switzerland and finally in March 1937 to the USA, where she worked as a writer and translator in New York City. She wrote novels, poems, and magazine columns. Though she was a native German speaker, she quickly learned to write in English.^[2] Landshoff died during a theater performance of Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss on January 19, 1966.^[2][1]

Ruth Landshoff-Yorck was the subject of a biography, with fourteen photographs, "Die vielen Leben der Ruth Landshoff-York" ("The many lives of the Ruth Landshoff-York") by Thomas Blubacher. Publisher: Insel Verlag Gmbh (8 Aug. 2015) Language: German ISBN 978-3458176435

Published works

• The fortified girl. Poems and drawings for my friends. (1929, privately printed poems with 6 and 6 drawings by the author)
• The Many and the One (Berlin 1930 reprint ed. and with an afterword by Walter Fähnders 2001 Berlin Aviva)
• Poems (1934, private printing with 8 poems)
• Poems (probably 1934 privately printed with 11 poems and drawings 5)
• The Poems (1935, private edition with 10 poems)
• The Man Who Killed Hitler (Hollywood 1939 London 1939, anonymous, along with Dean S. Jennings and David Malcolmson)
• Sixty to Go (New York 1944)
• Lili Marlene. An Intimate Diary (New York 1945)
• So Cold the Night (New York 1948)
• the immense tenderness (Frankfurt 1952)
• January deadlock (New York 1962 privately printed)
• I'll Measure Them For a White White Coat ... (New York 1963 privately printed)
• Gossip, fame and small fires. Biographical Impressions (Cologne 1963 revised and expanded edition ed. By Claudia Schopp man. Frankfurt am Main, 1997)
• The Poet as a Dictator (New York 1965 privately printed)
• The Men in Her Life . Hg and with an afterword by Walter Fähnders (first edition from the estate, Berlin 2002 Aviva, revised edition: Berlin 2005, Aviva).
• Treasure Seekers of Venice. Hg. and with an afterword by Walter Fähnders (first edition from the estate, Berlin 2004 Aviva, reprint: Berlin 2013 Aviva)
• In the depths of hell . Hg., And with an afterword by Walter Fähnders (first edition from the estate, Berlin 2010 Aviva)^[2]
• Das Mädchen mit wenig PS. Feuilletons aus den zwanziger Jahren. Hrsg. und mit einem Nachwort von Walter Fähnders. AvivA Verlag, Berlin 2015. 224 S.; ISBN 978-3-932338-81-6

References

External links

• Ruth Landshoff on IMDb