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Name: Ebert, Eva Esther

image of individual

Nee: Speier, used spelling Speyer as an actress

Birth Date: 24 Aug 1882 Berlin

Death Date: 13 Aug 1975 Mombasa

First Date: 1935

Last Date: 1975

Profession: Actress

Area: Tanganyika (1935); Nairobi; Mombasa

Married: 1. In Düsseldorf 25 July 1907 Otto Hermann August Stoeckel (1873-1958); 2. In Berlin 5 Nov 1918 Karl Robert Ebert (1882-9 Mar 1926)

Children: Anna-Liesa (Elwenspoek) (1905-1995 S. Africa); Ottilie Eva Ruth (Brown) (31 Dec 1907 Dusselforf)

Book Reference: Matthäus Edinger (Aspach, Austria)

General Information:

Eva Speyer-Ebert applied for compensation in 1958 and was adjudged a monthly pension in 1962. Therefore, she had to confirm every year at the German Embassy in Nairobi that she was still alive. She was almost 93 years old at the time of her death. Previously 1932 was given as the year of her death (see Ancestry). There is an attested death certificate in her file stating that she died at the Katherine Bibby Hospital (later named Mombasa Hospital) in 1975.
Unfortunately little is known about Eva Speyer in East Africa. She emigrated in 1935, but where to exactly and under which circumstances she lived there is unknown. She stated that she had no opportunity to continue acting in Tanganyika and Kenya but instead accepted duties like housekeeping, nursing, babysitting and so on. At least from 1952 on, she resided in Nairobi at 16 Woodvale Grove, Westlands. In 1968 she moved to Mombasa together with her daughter Ruth. Based on the P.O. Box number she gave (82735) it is clear that Ruth Eva Brown who died in 1985 was Eva Speyer’s daughter. Eva also had another daughter named Anna-Liesa Elwenspoek, who also lived at Nairobi in the 1950s and 60s. However, she stayed in Europe until after WWII and went to Africa only afterwards. According to some sources she died in 1995 in South Africa.
Matthäus Edinger in Cinegraph Encyclopedia 2024 Eva Esther Speyer (Speier) was born on 24 August 1882, the third of five  daughters of the stockbroker Feodor Speyer and his wife, the milliner Wilhelmine "Minnie" Mann (Mahn), in her parents' flat at Bülowstraße 76 in Berlin. Her father came from the province of Posen (Poznan) and was Jewish, her mother was from a Protestant family. Eva Speyer and her sisters were baptised as Christians. From 1888 onwards her father ran a wholesale wine shop in Kronenstraße. From 1892 to 1901 the family lived in Steglitzer Straße 7 (now Pohlstraße in Berlin-Tiergarten), then in Kantstraße. After leaving school, Eva Speyer initially worked as an accountant. Soon after her father's death in 1901, she went to the Marie Seebach Acting School and was selected from 150 applicants for a scholarship that allowed her to train free of charge.She made her stage debut in the season of 1903/04 at the city theatre of Brieg in Silesia (Brzeg) and also performed in Hirschberg (Jelenia Góra) during this time. In the meantime living in Schneidemühl (Pila), she moved to the Stadttheater Posen in 1905. On 10 September 1905 her daughter Anna-Liesa was born in Breslau (Wroclaw). Her father was the theatre director Hugo Gerlach. In 1906 Eva Speyer signed a contract with the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus for an annual income of 1,000 marks plus 8 marks per performance. She played in Gerhart Hauptmann's dramas "Der Biberpelz" and "Die Weber", in Frank Wedekind's "Frühlings Erwachen", but also in comedies such as Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Her speciality was that of the young lover and character actress. She was consistently entrusted with leading roles.

In Düsseldorf she also met her colleague Otto Stoeckel, whom she married on 25 July 1907. Their daughter Ruth was born on 31 December 1907. In the summer of 1908, Eva Speyer and a few colleagues embarked from Hamburg for New York to perform in the following two seasons at the German-language theatres of Milwaukee and Chicago as well as at the Irving Place Theatre in New York. At a guest performance in St Paul in Minnesota she again played Hauptmann, this time "Die versunkene Glocke": "The ensemble was excellent, but the playing of Eva Speier as Rautendelein had a touch of the ethereal in it that Hauptmann must have had in mind when writing the play" (The Minneapolis Tribune, 5 May 1909). In 1910 she returned to her hometown Berlin and joined the Lessing Theatre. In 1911 she divorced Otto Stoeckel.

In the same year, Paul Otto (1878-1943) offered her to film Henrik Ibsen's "Nora" - her favourite role, which she had already played in New York. As the young medium of film had a bad reputation in the theatre world and no artistic significance was attached to it, she initially
resisted, but eventually was persuaded and earned good reviews for her film debut. She was signed under contract by Continental-Kunstfilm GmbH and was given leading roles in films by Max Mack (DIE FALLE, DIE GELBE RASSE, DIE HOCHZEITSFACKEL), Joe  May (ENTSAGUNGEN) and Otto Rippert (SURRY DER STEHER, ZWISCHEN HIMMEL UND ERDE). Within a short time she established herself - at that time still under the name Eva Speyer-Stoeckel - as one of the most sought-after female leads in the new feature film. Continental-Film soon dedicated its own "Eva Speyer art film series" to her (Illustrierte Kino-Woche, 3 August 1913). Her metier was the conventional drama with its suffering female figures, whom she interpreted with virtuosity. Her guiding principle was the maxim "Vermenschlichen ist alles!" (Humanization is everything), which Max Pohl (1855-1935) once wrote into her poetry album as a student of Seebach. Critics often praised her enormous versatility. 

During the First World War she made connections with US film companies and planned to continue her career in the USA, but the course of the war thwarted this plan. She continued to celebrate great successes in the German Reich. At the zenith of her fame, the later Union-Filmtheater  on  Senefelder  Platz  in  Berlin-Prenzlauer  Berg  was  named  "Eva-Speyer-Lichtspiele" (Eva Speyer cinema) in her honour when it was founded in 1919. 

Eva Speyer did not want to take part in the star cult that began to blossom more and more drastically in those years. Although she had the usual postcards with her likeness printed and answered enquiries from film magazines to satisfy the curiosity of her fan community, she
consistently stayed away from social events such as film balls, which were considered obligatory in the scene. She was also absent in fashion and society journals. In Reinhold Fritz Grosser's booklet "Wege zum Film" (Ways to the Film), a foray through the film world of the
young Weimar Republic, Eva Speyer was charcterized by the author to be "a woman of ideal disposition,  a genuine  artist with  a sunny,  cheerful nature, simplicity personified. No ridiculously primped fashion lady confronted me, but a woman with outward advantages and captivating manners, and yet an outstanding interpreter, one of our prime film actresses (...)." She herself also stated: "I am not a dress actress. (...) Perhaps I have already been reproached for not 'going along' with the others, but an actress who has devoted herself entirely to art must not lay claim to the allure of fashion" (Grosser, 1919).

Despite her great screen successes, she saw film work mainly as a lucrative source of income. Although she admitted that cinema drama had "already reached an intellectual and literary level", she complained that film, "the convenient cheap means mainly of the middle and lower classes", was partly "regarded as a business (...) in the hands of profit-seeking amateurs" (Die Frau im Film). Nonetheless, she devoted to her work with great dedication and tireless role study: "In the evening, she poses the figures at her home which she reproduces the next day well studied in front of the camera. No mimic gesture seems good enough to her. (...) For hours she can stand in front of the mirror and go through the mimic scale, and again and again she will find a new expression (...)" (Grosser, 1919).

During the shooting of the circus film UM DIE LIEBE DES DOMPTEURS (1918, Heinz Carl Heiland), an incident occured that almost cost Eva Speyer her life. Through a chain of unfortunate circumstances, she and her film partner Ferdinand Bonn got caught in the unprotected area of a tiger cage. The catastrophe seemed inevitable, but somehow the director managed to direct them both unharmed out of the danger zone. "Mrs. Speier and Bonn carried out the commands, the former especially with a calmness unbelievable for a woman (...)". (Der Kinematograph, no. 568, 1917). Afterwards, they both even suggested finishing the scene.

In the last days of the First World War, Eva Speyer married the merchant, theatre entrepreneur and film producer Robert Ebert, whom she had first met in 1913 and for whose Ebert-Film GmbH she has appeared in front of the camera several times since 1917. Around 1920, she made a seamless transition into the mature character field. She was cast several times in stately roles: As Countess Campobello in DIE MASKE (1919, E. A. Dupont), as Countess Aurora Königsmark in the Messter film DER GALANTE KÖNIG (1920, Alfred Halm) and finally even as French Queen Marie-Thérqse in LOUISE DE LAVALLIÈRE (1920/21, George Burghardt). In 1921 however, her career came to an abrupt end, the reasons for which are unknown. It is possible that she intended to retire from the film business, as her livelihood was well secured. At that time, she lived with her family in a villa at Klopstockstraße 42. Her husband was the managing director of numerous companies but suffered heavy financial losses during the inflation years and slid visibly into economic and personal ruin. A mental illness that gradually changed his character led to outbursts of rage and
inappropriate behaviour in public. Tutelage was imposed on him and Eva Speyer was appointed managing director of the real estate company Klopstockstraße 42 and of "Gedania" Vertrieb von Neuheiten GmbH. A forced auction of the joint property could just be averted. Eva Speyer considered a divorce, but Ebert intimidated her with threats. In 1926 he was committed to the "Irrenanstalt der Stadt Berlin" (an asylum) in Buch, where his condition deteriorated rapidly and where he died on 9 March 1926. As he had been heavily in debt, Eva Speyer rejected the inheritance and moved first to a flat at Bülowstraße 12 and soon afterwards to Albrecht-Achilles-Straße 6 in Berlin-Halensee. She resumed her artistic activities and could again be seen on the screen several times a year, but now in supporting roles that gradually shrank to the size of bit-parts. Here too, her versatility was evident, when at one time she embodied the wife of a pastor or a professor, at another time a homeless, a gambler or even a harlot. Leopold Freund's "Unsere Flimmerköpfe" (1929) identified her as a "mature lover / mother". A critique of her mother role in JUGENDTRAGÖDIE (1929, Adolf Trotz) showed that her style sometimes no longer met the taste of a new generation: Geno Ohlischlaeger, writing in the Berlin evening newspaper "Tempo", found - terse and biting - that "Eva Speyer would rather fit into a grotesque film" (18 December 1929).

In upcoming sound film, she was cast only four more times: In VA BANQUE (1930, Erich Waschneck), NAMENSHEIRAT (1930, Heinz Paul), ICH BLEIB' BEI DIR (1931, Johannes Meyer) and finally with an appearance as nurse, only a few seconds long, in Kurt Gerron's
melodrama about a female drug addict DER WEISSE DÄMON (1932). Nevertheless, in 1932 she achieved an annual income of 8,000 Reichsmarks, as her name was still recognized in the film world and her reputation from the 1910s silent film era secured her good contracts.

The takeover of power by the National Socialists changed Eva Speyer's life permanently. As she was now considered "half-Jewish", her contract with UFA got terminated. She was denied membership in the Reich Chamber of Culture, which would have been the prerequisite
for practising her profession. Her daughter Ruth made no secret of her rejection of the Nazis and thus put herself in great danger. However, a friend with connections to Nazi circles warned the family that they would soon face reprisals, whereupon Ruth decided to emigrate to East Africa. The actor Werner Tiedemann, to whom she has been married since 20 May 1933, accompanied her. After their departure on 16 October 1933, Eva Speyer remained alone in Berlin, but followed her daughter into emigration in summer of 1935. She first travelled to
London, where she stopped off at the luxurious estate "The Firs". Its owner Fritz Dupré was married to Else Hecker, a sister of the silent film director Waldemar Hecker, and was considered one of the richest residents of the British capital at the time. On 6 August 1935, Eva Speyer embarked on the SS Watussi in Southampton for East Africa via Mediterranean and Suez Canal. Her destination was the British Mandate Territory of Tanganyika, which as a former German colony still had strong ties to the German Reich and was populated by an above-average number of Germans. The first years of her exile are largely obscure. The former actress earned her living with - as she herself put it - "absolutely menial work". She took on occasional jobs as a nurse, nanny and housekeeper and lived from hand to mouth. In 1938, daughter Ruth - then living in the district capital Moshi - was granted permission to enter Kenya, at a time when National Socialist groups were greatly expanding their influence in Tanganyika. It is unclear whether the family suffered reprisals such as internment due to their German citizenship during the Second World War. In the 1940s, there is evidence of an Eva Ebert staying in the western Kenyan village of Songhor near Lake Victoria.

In 1948, the elder daughter Anna-Liesa - meanwhile divorced from director and writer Curt Elwenspoek - also emigrated to Africa with her son Lutz, born in 1926, to join her family. From 1952 at the latest, Eva Speyer lived in Westlands district of the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Here she owned a little house of corrugated iron and offered breakfast and lunch on a small scale. In her garden she kept a chameleon. Despite the great hardships and the completely different way of life in emigration, according to contemporary witnesses she always seemed content and did never utter a word of complaint.

In 1958, shortly before the deadline, she submitted an application for compensation by the "Bundesentschädigungsgesetz" (Federal Law on Compensation for Victims  of National Socialist Persecution) in Berlin. Since as a "half-Jew" without personal ties to Judaism she was not exposed to any danger to life and limb, she only claimed "damage to her professional advancement", emphasising in particular that she was "Richard Oswald's main force [staff member] in all his education films" and "worked for years with Max Mack as his main force". With the help of a dedicated lawyer, her case was accelerated as much as possible, so that in 1961 she was awarded a lump-sum pension back payment of DM 62,580 and from then on a monthly pension of DM 700. This amount got continuously adjusted and finally amounted to DM 1,686 per month at the time of her death. Nevertheless, Eva Speyer continued to work, among other things as a receptionist in a dental practice. In the meantime, her daughter Anna-Liesa was in a relationship with the Italian painter Bruno di Sopra (1897-1965), who was considered a "state artist" in Kenya and portrayed numerous members of the government. Eva Speyer was also depicted by him in a 1962 painting that survived in the family's possession. In 1968, 86-year-old Eva Speyer, who was still in good health for her age, moved to the coastal metropolis of Mombasa with her daughter Ruth and her daughter's second husband William "Bill" Brown. She died on 13 August 1975 - shortly before her 93rd birthday - in the Katherine Bibby Hospital as a result of age-related atherosclerosis.

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