German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg. Photo: Peter Gaue / Tango Film / Filmverlag der Autoren. Margit Carstensen in Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant/The bitter tears of Petra von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972).
On 1 June 2023, German actress Margit Carstensen (1940-2023) passed away in Stein, Germany, at the age of 83. She was one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's best-known anti-stars and played the title role in his classic films such as Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant/The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972).
Margit Carstensen was born in 1940 in Kiel, Germany. She was the daughter of a doctor and grew up in her birth town. In 1958, after completing her secondary education, she studied drama at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater (the State Academy for Music and Theatre) in Hamburg. She got her first stage engagements in Kleve, Heilbronn, Münster and Braunschweig. In 1965, she moved to the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg and took on leading roles in plays by John Osborne and Lope de Vega. After a four-year engagement, she entered the theatre scene in Bremen at the Theater am Goetheplatz in 1969. There, she met Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who soon emerged as the most talented and prolific representative of the Neuer Deutscher Film. Under his direction, she starred as Vittoria in Carlo Goldoni's comedy 'Das Kaffeehaus', as the serial killer Geesche Gottfried in the world premiere of Fassbinder's own play 'Bremer Freiheit' and the title role in the Henrik Ibsen adaptation 'Nora Helmer'. All three plays were filmed by Fassbinder in the 1970s. Carstensen became famous as one of the divas and muses of Fassbinder, who started filming incessantly, both for cinema and television. During the 1970s, he directed her 15 times in just 10 years. An impressive series of powerful portraits of women resulted: the lesbian fashion designer in Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972), the 19th-century serial killer Gesche Gottfried in Bremer Freiheit (1972), and Nora Helmer, the title role of the woman prying herself out of a bourgeois marriage in the emancipation drama Nora Helmer (1974), based on Ibsen's play 'A Doll's House'. Then she played a young woman who turns out to be married to a perverted and possessive sadist (Karlheinz Böhm) in Martha (1974), a young mother sinking lonely into depression and accompanying anxiety in Angst vor der Angst (1975), and the naive admirer of an unsuccessful megalomaniac poet who fancies himself Stefan George and plunders her savings in Satansbraten (1976). She was hilarious as the hypocritical adulteress in the haunting 'Kammerspiel' psychodrama Chinesisches Roulette (1976), in which she and her husband happen to end up in their holiday home at the same time with their lover. Then she played an RAF terrorist who shoots her husband, a bank manager, in a bank robbery in the crime comedy Die dritte Generation (1979).
After her time in Bremen, Margit Carstensen was associated with many theatre companies. Rainer Werner Fassbinder also continued to direct Carstensen on stage. These theatre productions included Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler', Strindberg's 'Miss Julie' and Clare Boothe Luce's 'Women in New York', which was later filmed by Fassbinder. After a four-year stay in Darmstadt (1973-1976) and then back in Hamburg, Carstensen moved to West Berlin in 1977 to join the Staatlichen Schauspielbühnen (1977-1982). During that busy period, Carstensen was also directed on a few occasions by other filmmakers. For example, film composer Peer Raben and actor Ulli Lommel, who were both members of the Fassbinder clan. For Lommel, she embodied Marlene Dietrich in the historical drama Adolf und Marlene (Ulli Lommel, ) in which a passionately in love Hitler tries to snare Dietrich as his mistress. In the 1980s, Carstensen acted in several noteworthy films: the dramatic horror film Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981) alongside Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill and Heinz Bennent, the blasphemous Liebeskonzil (Werner Schroeter, 1982), and the World War II drama Bittere Ernte/Bitter Harvest (Agnieszka Holland, 1985) with Armin Mueller-Stahl. She also appeared in two parts of the Germany trilogy by controversial director Christoph Schlingensief: Magda Goebbels in 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler - Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker (1989) and a police assistant in media the persiflage Terror 2000 - Intensivstation Deutschland (1994). For stage and film director Leander Haussmann, she starred in Sonneneallee (1999) and in John Gabriel Borkman (2000). On stage, she worked between 1982 and 1995 under the direction of Hansgünther Heyme at the Württembergischen Staatstheater in Stuttgart. She then followed Leander Haussmann, with whom she had already shot two films, among others, to the Schauspielhaus in Bochum (1995-2006). In between, she often took on guest roles and performed several times for the Münchner Kammerspiele. She was also part of the cast that performed the world premiere of Elfriede Jelinek's play 'Bambiland' at the Vienna Burgtheatre in 2003/2004, directed by Christoph Schlingensief. In 2011 she shone alongside Martin Wuttke at the Berlin Volksbühne in René Pollesch's play 'Schmeiß dein Ego weg!' (Throw your ego away). In the cinema, Carstensen appeared in films by younger directors such as Romuald Karmakar (Manila, 2000), Chris Kraus (Scherbentanz/Shattered Glass, 2002), Oskar Roehler (Agnes und seine Brüder/Agnes and his Brothers, 2004), Detlev Buck (Hände weg von Mississippi/Hands off Mississippi, 2007) and Frauke Finsterwalder (Finsterworld, 2013). She made her last on-screen appearance in Tatort: Wofür es sich zu leben lohnt/What is worth living for (Aelrun Goette, 2016). In this episode from the popular Krimi series Tatort/Crime Scene, she, Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann, two other Fassbinder luminaries, emerged as wreak angels. About her old director, Margit Carstensen said: "Fassbinder was a great poet and visionary - with an incredible charisma and insane power." Margit Carstensen died in 2023 at the age of 83 in a hospital in Heide, Germany. Carstensen was awarded numerous awards, including the Filmband in Gold for her performance in Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1973) and the Bavarian Film Prize (2002). As early as 1973, she was voted best actress of the year by German film critics. She received the Götz George Award for her life's work in 2019.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and German) and IMDb.
