Olga Tschechowa

Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova (born Knipper; 14 (26 April) 1897, Alexandropol (now Gyumri, Armenia) – 9 March 1980, Munich) – German actress, wife of Mikhail Chekhov, sister of Lev Knipper. Her parents were Russified Germans. The family of his father, Konstantin Knipper, a civil engineer, came to Russia in the early XIX century from Westphalia. When Olga was sixteen, she was taken to Moscow by her father’s sister Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova. She assigned her niece to the studio at the Art more

Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova (born Knipper; 14 (26 April) 1897, Alexandropol (now Gyumri, Armenia) – 9 March 1980, Munich) – German actress, wife of Mikhail Chekhov, sister of Lev Knipper.
Her parents were Russified Germans. The family of his father, Konstantin Knipper, a civil engineer, came to Russia in the early XIX century from Westphalia. When Olga was sixteen, she was taken to Moscow by her father’s sister Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova. She assigned her niece to the studio at the Art Theatre, in which she had been playing for several years. However, the study for Olga ended quickly. She fell in love with her cousin, Mikhail Chekhov, who was considered a rising star of the Moscow Art Theatre, and married him. A year and a half later, the young had a daughter Ada, and two years later they divorced.
In 1920, Olga Chekhova left Russia for Germany. In 1921, she made her debut in German cinema in the film Castle Vogeled by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. In 1929 she directed the film “The Joke of My Love” with Mikhail Chekhov in the title role, who also decided not to return to Soviet Russia. By the early 30s, Chekhova became a real star of German cinema. She received German citizenship in 1930. In 1936 she married Belgian industrialist Marcel Robins, but the marriage broke up two years later. Olga Chekhova focused on film work and was active until the collapse of the Third Reich.
On April 27, 1945, she was arrested by the Soviet occupation authorities and taken by plane from Berlin to Moscow. Two months later, on June 25, she was flown back to Berlin.[1]
In the first postwar years, Chekhova worked mainly in the theater. In 1949, she moved from a house in Friedrichshagen in the Soviet occupation zone to a new apartment in the western Berlin district of Charlottenburg. From 1949 to 1974, she appeared in 22 films, half of which were shot in 1950 and 1951. In 1950, she settled in Munich, which became the center of West German filmmaking. In 1952, she published the first part of selective and embellished memoirs “I do not keep silent!”, as well as a collection of articles on beauty and fashion “A woman without age”. In 1955 she founded Olga Chekhova Cosmetics in Munich with branches in Berlin and Milan. In 1973, she published a new memoir, “My clock goes differently.”
Her daughter Ada and granddaughter Vera also became famous actresses.
Olga Chekhova died at the age of 82. She was buried in Munich at Obermenzing Cemetery.