After Adolf Hitler installed Joseph Goebbels as the Reich’s minister of propaganda, the new regime flooded German cinemas with films that either soothed the masses with light‑hearted musical numbers or pushed the twisted Nazi worldview. In this forgotten movie spotlight we dive into the lives of ten starlets who navigated fame, politics, and tragedy under the watchful eye of the UFA.
Forgotten Movie Starlets of Nazi Germany
10 Lida Baarova
Lida Baarova was an established actress from Prague, and she signed a contract with the UFA for her first German film, Barcarole, in 1935. She turned down Hollywood offers to stay in Germany. Lida was engaged to Gustav Frohlich, a famous actor who divorced his Jewish wife to continue his acting career. The couple fully embraced the Nazis to benefit their own careers.
Goebbels became absolutely obsessed with Lida. Their two‑year affair catapulted her into the most coveted roles, and she amassed wealth and fame.
The liaison caused turmoil for Gustav and for Magda Goebbels, Joseph’s wife. Hitler eventually intervened, ordering Lida’s immediate deportation back to Prague to halt the domestic dispute.
In 2016 a German movie titled Devil’s Mistress dramatized the Baarova‑Goebbels romance, and a documentary called Zkaza krasou also explored their story.
9 Brigitte Horney
Brigitte Horney turned down the lucrative UFA contracts, preferring the freedom to work with any actors or directors she chose—especially her friend and former co‑star Joachim Gottschalk.
Gottschalk’s wife and children were Jewish, leading to his blacklisting. In 1941 Gestapo agents arrived at his home, prompting the family to commit a joint suicide to avoid capture.
The tragedy shook Horney, and fearing for her own safety she agreed to appear in the propaganda film Am Ende der Welt (The End of the World) in 1944. Goebbels was dissatisfied, so the movie was not released until after the war.
Overwhelmed, Horney fled to Switzerland, leaving her husband behind. After the war she became a U.S. citizen and married Hanns Swarzenski, a Jewish art historian.
8 Lilian Harvey
Lilian Harvey was English‑born but grew up in Germany from the age of eight. Discovered as a dancer, she rose to stardom in silent movies and later filmed in French, English, and German.
She moved to the United States in 1933, tried Hollywood for two years, then returned to Berlin in 1935 where the Third Reich guaranteed her success. By starring in dozens of films she earned a luxurious car, a home, and the reputation of Hitler’s favorite musical heroine, often cast as the cute, virtuous girl‑next‑door.
By 1942 she emigrated back to the United States, volunteered in Los Angeles, and traveled the world, escaping Germany just before the war’s final devastation.
7 Sybille Schmitz
In 1932 Sybille Schmitz signed a five‑year contract with UFA, but Goebbels disliked her quiet demeanor and non‑Aryan features. Consequently, she was cast in science‑fiction pictures or as femme fatales and spies.
She finally landed the lead in the 1943 production Titanic. After a costly and chaotic shoot, Goebbels banned the film from German theaters.
Trapped in a contract she never asked for, Schmitz faced criticism from exiled filmmakers for remaining in Germany. After the war she took her own life.
6 Marika Rokk
Marika Rokk was born in Cairo to Hungarian parents, trained worldwide as a dancer and actress, and headlined three popular German musical comedies during Goebbels’ push for UFA stars to rival American productions.
Specializing in gymnastics and circus work, she tap‑danced and performed acrobatics on screen. Feeling sufficiently popular, she threatened to return to Hungary unless UFA raised her salary dramatically.
She married director Georg Jacoby, securing coveted roles and a paycheck of 30,000 Reichsmarks per film—a sum that would make her a millionaire today.
5 Renate Muller
Renate Muller was one of Germany’s most popular actresses in the 1920s and ’30s. When the Nazis seized power, Goebbels tried to pair her with Hitler, but she refused both the liaison and any propaganda work.
Goebbels had the Gestapo tail her, discovering she loved a Jewish man who fled to England for safety. When she attempted to visit him, the Gestapo barred her from leaving Germany.
Under intense pressure she finally agreed to star in the anti‑Semitic film Togger, playing a journalist. Soon afterward she checked herself into a hospital and died under mysterious circumstances—falling or jumping from a third‑floor window. Her life inspired the 1960 film Sweetheart of the Gods.
4 Zarah Leander
Zarah Leander was celebrated for her deep, resonant voice and masculine bearing. Though she built a career in Sweden, Goebbels offered her a UFA contract after Hollywood showed interest.
The contract made her rich and famous, but Goebbels ensured she could not leave Germany. He paid her in German marks instead of Swedish kronor and even offered a mansion if she renounced Swedish citizenship—an offer she declined.
In 1943 an Allied air raid destroyed her German home, providing the chance to escape back to Sweden. Her autobiography notes friendships with gay men and mentions that impersonators performed her songs in drag shows. A 1986 documentary, My Life for Zarah Leander, explores her life in detail.
3 Kristina Soderbaum
Kristina Soderbaum married director Veit Harlan, Goebbels’ favorite filmmaker, which propelled her to become Germany’s sweetheart, embodying the modest, self‑sacrificing ideal.
In 1940 she starred in the virulently anti‑Semitic film Jud Süß, playing a sweet girl whose fiancé is tortured after a Jewish man rapes her, leading her to drown herself. The movie was timed to precede the Nazis’ announcement of mass deportations, and many hold Soderbaum partially responsible for the Holocaust’s death toll.
2 Kathe Von Nagy
Kathe von Nagy was one of the few actresses with non‑Germanic features who thrived in Nazi cinema. Raised in a wealthy Hungarian family, she mastered French and German, published writing in Budapest, and turned to silent films in the 1920s.
Her first husband, Constantin J. David, was Jewish but lived in Italy, sparing him from German persecution. Kathe continued acting throughout the war, traveling to France and Italy, largely avoiding the intense Nazi scrutiny that fell on many of her peers.
1 Heidemarie Hatheyer
Heidemarie Hatheyer is best known for Ich klage an (I Accuse), a film where she plays a woman diagnosed with multiple sclerosis who, together with her fictional husband, decides to end her life by poison.
The courtroom drama debates whether the husband’s act constitutes murder, effectively endorsing the Nazi euthanasia program (the T4 Program) that led to mass killings of disabled individuals.
After the war the film was banned, but Hatheyer’s haunting performance remains a stark reminder of how cinema was used to justify atrocities. The film is now available online with English subtitles.