Biography:

Lissy Tempelhof was born in 1929 in Berlin, where she experienced WWII as a teenager. To earn her living after the war, she worked as a Trümmerfrau clearing rubble and, later on, as a streetcar conductor and secretary. After performing with amateur theater groups and cabarets in her free time, she got work as an actress at the Theater Anklam.

She studied at the Ernst Busch Academy for Performing Arts in Berlin from 1950 to 1953. Engagements at prestigious theaters followed, including at the Staatstheater Dresden and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. In 1963, she moved to the Deutsches Theater Berlin, where she was a member of the ensemble for over 35 years, working with directors including Adolf Dresen, Friedo Soler and Benno Besson.

Parallel to her work in theater, Tempelhof has played in many movies and television productions since the early 1950s. Her first leading role was as the doctor Inge Ruoff, a member of the Nazi party who sides with a prominent Jewish doctor, in Konrad Wolf’s Professor Mamlock. She also appeared in Heiner Carow’s WWII movie Die Russen kommen, which was banned in 1968 and not shown until 1987.

Tempelhof was awarded the Jury and Audience Award at East Germany’s National Film Festival in 1980 for her performance as the women’s brigade leader Maria Boltzin in Iris Gusner’s Alle meine Mädchen. Since the 1990s, she has mainly acted in television productions and series, including Der Landarzt and Für alle Fälle Stefanie.

Lissy Tempelhof is also known as a chasonnière and sang the title song in Sonnensucher (Sun Seekers, 1957, dir. Konrad Wolf). She has released several records, including Nie bist du ohne Nebendir (You Are Never without Beside You, 1973) based on lyrics by Joachim Ringelnatz, and Begeistert von Berlin (Thrilled by Berlin, 1972). Tempelhof lives in Berlin.

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