Wirth, Else 'Pitty'

INTRIGUER (GERMANY)
BORN 25 Dec 1907, Ruhla, Thüringen - DIED 2007
BIRTH NAME Weinreich, Else Olga
GRAVE LOCATION Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes: Cimetière de Rabiac, Route de Grasse (against the back wall, northeastern corner)

Else 'Pitty' Wirth was born Else Olga Weinreich. During her youth she already wanted to be a boy and after she moved from Thüringen to Berlin in 1928 she dressed as a man and preferred to be called Peter ("Pitty").

She married twice to hide her lesbian preferences from view. Her first husband was named Fritz Fritzler. They married in 1929 and a divorce followed in 1933. Her second husband was the taylor Erich Wirth, who wasn't sexually interested in women at all. She married him in 1944 and they divorced in 1950. After the war she had a hard time to support herself and her companion, the dancer Tamara Streck. After Streck introduced her to actress Lilian Harvey she managed to earn a little money by answering Harvey's post.

Harvey invited Wirth and Streck to her home, but she threw Streck out after she made sexual advances. Wirth became her companion and had a huge influence over her. Harvey drank too much and it has was stated that at one night she had drunkenly stepped into Wirth's bed. After this Wirth's power over her was complete and she was accused of blackmailing Harvey. After Harvey died in 1968 she tried to get money for the funeral from Berlin and at the same time she laid her hands on Harvey's fortune (Harvey's family didn't know about her Swiss bank accounts).

Wirth lived comfortable from Harvey's money and tried to meet famous women. However, Camilla Horn and Lilli Palmer didn't want to have anything to do with her. In 1985 she was accused of fraud and Harvey's biographer Uwe Klöckner-Draga called her a devil and removed her entirely from his biography to protect Harvey's name. However, there seems to be little independent evidence of all these wrongdoings apart from Klöckner-Draga's statements. In later years Wirth lived at the Lagerhaus Strasse 3 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. After she died in 2007 she was buried in Harvey's grave in Antibes.

Related persons
• lived together with Harvey, Lilian
• met Horn, Camilla

Images

The grave of Lilian Harvey at the Cimetière de Rabiac, Antibes.
Picture by Androom (02 Dec 2008)

 

The grave of Lilian Harvey at the Cimetière de Rabiac, Antibes.
Picture by Androom (02 Dec 2008)

 


Wisinger-Florian, Olga

Published: 22 Mar 2009
Last update: 31 Dec 2022