Ida Orloff was the daughter of George Weissbeck, a German who
worked as a brewer in Russia at the time she was born. Her mother
came from Heidelberg and would nearly reach the age of ninety,
but her father died when she was four years old. Her stepfather
was Georg Siegler, Edler von Eberswald, an impoverished nobleman
who was an officer in the Austrian army. After her mother's
remarriage Ida's used Siegler von Eberswald as her last name
although she wasn't formally adopted.
Ida was educated
at a convent in Sarajevo and - after the death of Siegler in
1905 in Riva - at the private Theaterschule Otto in Vienna.
When she was thirteen she tried to drown herself. She was saved,
but thoughts of suicide would return during her life. Her small
acting part in Frank Wedekind's "Die Büchse der Pandora" in
a private performance staged by Wedekind and Karl Krauss in
Vienna attracted the attention of Otto Brahm. He brought her
to Berlin. Her mother came with her and they lived at the Thomasiusstrase
in Moabit.
She had already assumed the name Ida Orloff
and was often called Iduschka because she was born in St. Petersburg
and spoke Russian fluently. At the Lessing Theatre in Berlin
she performed in "Die Wildente" (1905), "Der Bund der Jugend"
(1907) and "Baumeister Solness" (1908), all under the direction
of Emil Lessing.
She also performed in "Hanneles Himmelfahrt"
by Gerhart Hauptmann in 1905 at the Lessing Theatre. Hauptmann
was stunned by the young girl and promptly fell in love with
her. Secretly he wrote a play especially for her, "Und Pippa
tanzt!" (1906). They started an affair and from Hauptmann's
diary we know that he watched fascinated when she undressed
for him on March 27th, 1906. But Hauptmann had recently remarried
and would not leave his wife Margaretha Marschalk. He considered
Ida a little devil but he found it hard to break the spell.
They spent five days together at Göhren and Rügen in June, 1906
and possibly Hauptmann´s wife knew about it and tolerated it.
In
1907 the affair ended, but the image of Idinka (as he had called
her) kept haunting Hauptmann and would return in his work for
years. Their relationship became known to the general public
only decades later and after his death, but people like Frank
Wedekind, Anton Wildgans and Alfred Kerr knew about it at the
time.
On July 23th, 1907 she married a friend from
her youth, the lawyer Karl Satter, just to be able to enjoy
more freedom without causing scandals. She divorced him on January
26th, 1908 because she had what she wanted - a married name
in her passport - but against her own expectations they stayed
together for ten years. She bore him a son, Heinrich, on September
27th, 1908. As an adult he looked strikingly like Hauptmann
who may have been his father.
In 1910 she played the
part of Hilde Wangel in an adaptation of Ibsen's "Baumeister
Solness" at the Lessing Theatre. Around that time she signed
a contract at the Burgtheater in Vienna, but during her time
there she hardly got any parts for several years. Her appearance
in the first performance of "Feuer" by Cszokor at the Ronacher
Varieté during a time off period in 1912 was considered scandalous
for an actress of the Burgtheater.
In 1913 she played
in the Danish movie "Atlantis", based on the novel that Hauptmann
had conceived during a trip to America, on which he was accompanied
by Orloff and the circus artist Charles Unthan. In the contract
with Hauptmann Nordisk Films had committed itself to include
Orloff as well as Unthan in the movie. But Ida Orloff was unconvincing
as an erotic dancer and Unthan's virtuoso act had little to
do with the rest of the movie.
Because she had left
for Norway without permission she was fired by Hugo Thimig,
the manager of the Burgtheatre. But her contract didn't exclude
appearances in movies and she received damages of 8,000 crowns.
She left for St. Petersburg with her own ensemble in 1913, including
Hermann Benke, Rudolf Forster, George Saiko and dramatist Franz
Csoko. Their performances were appreciated, but the German colony
was too small and she lost most of her money during this venture.
Shortly after her return to Austria she fled with Karl Satter
to Denmark to keep him out of the army during the First World
War. They had a second son there, but he died after only six
weeks. In 1915/1916 she was engaged at the Thalia Theatre in
Hamburg where she befriended the actress Leonore Ehn. During
her third pregnancy her marriage to Satter finally broke down
and she returned to Vienna alone to give birth to a son, Hermann,
on March 31th, 1918.
She gave the child into the care
of Satter's older sister Hanna and went to Berlin with her other
son. There she returned to the theatre and she appeared in 150
performances of "Die kleine Sklavin" by Dietzenschmidt. She
also played in her final movie "Baccarat" (1919). In 1920 she
had a leading part in Sudermann's "Die Raschhoffs" at the Residenztheater.
In 1920 she appeared in "Das Paradies" by Hans Rehfisch.
She
suggested to the critic and journalist Franz Leppman to marry
her. He refused but Ida persisted and they did marry in 1921.
In 1922 their son Wolfgang was born. By that time she had grown
stout and it became difficult to find new acting engagements.
She left the stage and joined the radio in Berlin in 1923. She
was the first woman to read poems and plays. Her employers were
Nordische Rundfunk AG (NORAG) and Funk-Stunde Berlin. She also
translated books from Russian into German, including Dostojevski.
For this work she made use of a Russian assistant. Her husband
was a Jew and when the nazis came to power in 1933 they left
Germany and went to Italy.
In Italy it was hard to
find to work and soon she was in serious financial trouble.
She asked Hauptmann to help her (he knew Mussolini), but he
refused, stating that he couldn't trouble Mussolini with private
affairs. Both she and her husband worked at the Landschulheim
Florenz for refugee children until it was closed in 1938. In
1938 she met Hauptmann by accident in Rapallo. She hardly reminded
him of the girl he had fallen in love with and she told him
about her five sons from her two marriages. She and Leppmann
went to England, but in 1938 - in need of money and in want
of a divorce - she returned to Germany alone.
She obtained
her divorce and lived for a while with her son Hermann who was
the editor of "Sportzeitung". She also lived with her friend
Leonore Ehn for a while. After the Germans invaded Norway she
appeared in productions for the armed forces in that country.
In 1941 she performed once more in a play by Hauptmann, "Der
rote Hahn" at the Rose-Theater in Berlin. It was to be her last
success and Hauptmann and his wife Margarete came to see the
last of her forty performances. They met and acted like they
hadn't heard from each other since 1908. Hauptmann kept his
distance. Margarete boldly invited Ida to inspire her husband
again, stating she had never had any objection to her doing
so in the first place. On March 31th, 1942 she played her last
part ever in "The Pillars of Society" by Ibsen.
A period
of illness followed and she settled in Tullnerbach near Vienna
where she lived with the sister of her first husband, who was
the widow of an Austrian admiral. She met Hauptmann for the
last time in 1943 in Vienna when the Austrians celebrated his
80th birthday. When the Russian army invaded Austria she was
confident that she could talk to the soldiers and stop them
from plundering, but when news went round that the Russians
were extremely violent and raped Austrian women everywhere she
committed suicide to escape that faith (possibly she was first
attacked by a soldier). A few days earlier her son Hermann had
fallen in the war near Vienna. Ida was buried in the garden
of the house where she had lived in Tullnerbach and only in
1953 her remains were transferred to the cemetery in Pressbaum.
Her
former Husband Karl Satter died in 1949 in Vienna. Their surviving
son Heinrich Satter was an author and he revealed her affair
with Hauptmann to the public in 1953 in an article in the "Frankfurter
Illustrierten", after Hauptmann's widow had prevented him in
1948 to publish Hauptmann's letters to Ida. Only after the death
of Hauptmann's son Bevenuto in 1965, Hauptmann's diary entries
about Ida were published and in 1967 Heinrich Satter published
his book about the affair, "Weder Engel noch Teufel" ("Neither
Angel Nor Devil"). Satter died in 1992.
Her younger
son Wolfgang Leppman became an eminent germanist. He was a professor
at the University of Eugene, Oregon and the author of biographies
of Goethe, Rilke and Hauptmann. He was known for his wit and
irony and he died in 2002.
Family
• Husband: Satter, Karl (1907-1908) (divorce or separation)
Related persons
• cooperated with Csokor, Franz Theodor
• was a friend of Ehn, Leonore
• cooperated with Marr, Hans
• cooperated with Reicher, Emanuel
• has a connection with Thimig, Hugo
• knew Wedekind, Frank
• was a friend of Wedekind, Tilly
• has a connection with Wildgans, Anton
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