Brigitte Horney

Brigitte Horney (29 March 1911 in Dahlem, Berlin – 27 July 1988, in Hamburg) was a German theatre and film actress. Best remembered was her role as Empress Katherine the Great in the 1943 version of the UFA film version of Baron Münchhausen, directed by Josef von Báky, with Hans Albers in the title role.

Brigitte Horney was the daughter of noted psychoanalyst Karen Horney and grew up in Dahlem, as of 1920 a locality of Berlin. She was, for more than a decade, engaged with Berlin's Volksbühne. When she accepted the starring role in the highly popular film Liebe, Tod und Teufel (Love, Death and the Devil, 1934), a new star was born with the Leitmotif song "So oder so ist das Leben".

Horney was a good friend of the actor Joachim Gottschalk and appeared in four films with him. Although Gottschalk had fallen from favor with Nazi officials, Horney attended Gottschalk's funeral (Germany, 1941), regardless of the political and career implications of doing so.

After the Second World War she became an American citizen, but continued to visit Germany frequently, where she had a house in Bavaria. She married the eminent Jewish art historian Hanns Swarzenski, a leading authority on German Romanesque manuscripts. She continued to work in films and television (i.e. Oliver Twist) until her death in 1988.

Film

• Rasputin, Dämon der Frauen (1932)
• The Country Schoolmaster (1933)
• Blood Brothers (1935)
• The House of the Spaniard (1936)
• City of Anatol (1936)
• Savoy Hotel 217 (1936)
• Secret Lives (1937)
• Anna Favetti (1938)
• Faded Melody (1938)
• You and I (1938)
• A Woman Like You (1939)
• Target in the Clouds (1939)
• Uproar in Damascus (1939)
• Liberated Hands (1939)
• Enemies (1940)
• The Girl from Fano (1941)
• Beloved World (1942)
• Baron Munchhausen (1943)
• The Last Summer (1954)
• The Glass Tower (1957)
• The Inheritance of Bjorndal (1960)
• The Trygon Factor (1966)
• Charlotte (1981)
• Bella Donna (1983)

Television

• Derrick - Season 4, Episode 3: "Eine Nacht im Oktober" (1977)
• Heidi (TV series) (1978)
• Huckleberry Finn and His Friends (TV series) (1979)
• Derrick - Season 7, Episode 6: "Die Entscheidung" (1980)
• Das Erbe der Guldenburgs (TV series) (1987-1989)