STRAUB, AGNES

(1890-1941)

Actress. Straub was considered an outstanding actress in theExpressioniststyle immediately after World War I, but her career had begun a decade earlier in Heidelberg, playing the title role inFranzGrillparzer'sSappho. From Heidelberg she got engagements in Bonn and Königsberg before settling inBerlinfor the 1915-1916 season. At both theDeutsches Theaterand later at the newly renamed State Theater in Berlin, she excelled in heavy tragic roles such as Kriemhild inFriedrichHebbel'sDie Nibelungen(The Nibelungs),WilliamShakespeare's Lady Macbeth, Queen Elizabeth inFriedrichSchiller'sMaria Stuart, Clytemnestra inThe Oresteian Trilogyby Aeschylus, the title role inHeinrich vonKleist'sPenthislea, and Cäcilie inJohann WolfgangGoethe'sStella. In addition to those well-known roles, she played the leads in new plays byHans Henny Jahnn, Arnolt Bronnen, Ernst Barlach, Paul Kornfeld, andGeorg Kaiser. In 1932 Straub became the first recipient of theLouise DumontAward, given to the actress considered at the time to be the best in her field. Straub's career flourished in the Third Reich, and not only as an actress. She became one of the few female director-managers during the Nazi dictatorship when she leased the Kurfürstendamm Theater in Berlin's fashionable West End and ran it as the "Agnes Straub Theater am Kurfürstendamm."