Hella Moja (born Helene Gertrud Schwerdtfeger, 18 January 1896 – December 1951) was a German
screenwriter,
film producer and
film actress
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...
. She was married to the director
Heinz Paul
Heinz Paul (13 August 1893 – 14 March 1983) was a German screenwriter, film producer and director. He was married to the actress Hella Moja.
Selected filmography Director
* ''The Street of Forgetting'' (1923)
* ''The Dice Game of Life'' (1925) ...
.
Biography
Hella Moja was born Helene Gertrud Schwerdtfeger on 18 January 1896. Some sources list her birthdate as 2 February 1890.
Early in her career, Moja appeared at the Teatr Artystyczny in
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
. After both of her parents died, she worked as a translator for Polish and Russian, and as a writer for the Deutsche Presse-Korrespondenz in
Hannover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
, the Ullstein-Verlag, and the Scherl-Verlag.
Moja began taking acting lessons with Emmanuel Reicher and
Frida Richard
Frida Richard (born Friederike Raithel, 1 November 1873 – 12 September 1946) was an Austrian actress.
Selected filmography
* '' The Sin of Helga Arndt'' (1916)
* '' The Queen's Love Letter'' (1916)
* '' The Marriage of Luise Rohrbach'' (1917)
...
and made her debut in 1913 at the
Lessing Theater in Berlin.
Alwin Neuß
Carl Alwin Heinrich Neuß (17 June 1879 – 30 October 1935) was a German film director and actor, noted for playing Sherlock Holmes in a series of silent films during the 1910s. He also played the dual role of Jekyll and Hyde in the 1910 Danish ...
took notice of Moja, and she made her film debut in ''The White Rose'' (1915). Some of her early film appearances include ''The Path of Tears'' (1916), ''The Oath of Renate Rabenau'' (1917), ''The Stranger'' (1917), and ''The Enchanted Castle'' (1918). In 1918, Moja founded her own film company, Hella Moja Filmgesellschaft, which would produce 16 films. Her first production was ''Wondrous is the Fairy Tale of Love'' (1918) with
Ernst Hofmann
Ernst Karl Heinrich Hofmann (7 December 1880 – 27 April 1945) was a German stage and film actor.
Selected filmography
* '' The White Roses'' (1916)
* '' Dr. Hart's Diary'' (1917)
* '' Countess Kitchenmaid'' (1918)
* '' Ikarus, the Flying Man ...
, for which critics praised her acting.
In the 1920s, Moja starred in films such as
Countess Walewska (1920), directed by
Otto Rippert
Otto Rippert (22 October 1869 – 15 January 1940) was a German film director during the silent film era.
Biography
Rippert was born in Offenbach am Main, Germany, and began his career as a stage actor, working in theatres in Baden-Baden, Forst ...
,
What a Girl
''What a Girl'' (German:''So ein Mädel'') is a 1920 German silent film directed by Urban Gad and starring Hella Moja and Harry Liedtke and Ferry Sikla.Nelmes & Selbo
Cast
* Hella Moja
* Harry Liedtke
* Ferry Sikla
* Hermann Picha
* Ada S ...
(1920),
Felicitas Grolandin (1923),
Department Store Princess
''Department Store Princess'' (German: ''Die Warenhausprinzessin'') is a 1926 German silent film directed by Heinz Paul and starring Hella Moja, Hans Albers and Paul Heidemann. No copies of the film are known to survive.
The film's sets were ...
(1926),
U-9 Weddigen (1927), and
The Carousel of Death (1928).
In addition to acting and producing, she is credited with writing 13 films, including ''Department Store Princess'' (1926),
The False Prince (1927),
Three Days of Life and Death (1929),
The Other Side (1931), and the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
propaganda film
The Four Musketeers (1934), all of which her husband
Heinz Paul
Heinz Paul (13 August 1893 – 14 March 1983) was a German screenwriter, film producer and director. He was married to the actress Hella Moja.
Selected filmography Director
* ''The Street of Forgetting'' (1923)
* ''The Dice Game of Life'' (1925) ...
directed.
Moja only appeared in seven films in the 1930s, making her final screen appearance in
Comrades at Sea (1938). In 1938, she was expelled from the
Reichsfilmkammer
The Reichsfilmkammer (RFK; en, Reich Chamber of Film) was a statutory corporation controlled by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda that regulated the film industry in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Membership in the associa ...
on the grounds that she was only a part-time screenwriter.
Moja legally changed her name to Helka Moroff in 1934, to Elka Moroff in 1937, and to Hella Sewa in 1942. She worked as a prompter at
Theater Kiel
Theater Kiel is a theatre company in Kiel, the capital of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is jointly funded by the city and the state. The company produces opera, musical, ballet, plays, and theatre for youth and children, in three different build ...
from 1942 until her death in 1951.
Moja committed suicide in December 1951, although a newspaper reported her death in 1937, and some sources list her death date as 15 January 1937. She was buried at
Friedhof Heerstraße
The Friedhof Heerstraße cemetery is located at Trakehnerallee 1 (''Trakehner avenue No.1''), district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in Berlin, Germany, to the east of the Olympiastadion. It covers an area of 149,650 square meters.
The c ...
, but her tomb was later leveled.
[http://www.berlin.friedparks.de/such/gedenkstaette.php?gdst_id=985 ]
Selected filmography
* ''
The Dancer from Tanagra'' (1920)
* ''
Countess Walewska'' (1920)
* ''
What a Girl
''What a Girl'' (German:''So ein Mädel'') is a 1920 German silent film directed by Urban Gad and starring Hella Moja and Harry Liedtke and Ferry Sikla.Nelmes & Selbo
Cast
* Hella Moja
* Harry Liedtke
* Ferry Sikla
* Hermann Picha
* Ada S ...
'' (1920)
* ''
Black Monday
Black Monday refers to specific Mondays when undesirable or turbulent events have occurred. It has been used to designate massacres, military battles, and stock market crashes.
Historic events
*1209, Dublin – when a group of 500 recently arriv ...
'' (1922)
* ''
The Beautiful Girl'' (1923)
* ''
Fiat Lux
Fiat Automobiles S.p.A. (, , ; originally FIAT, it, Fabbrica Italiana Automobili di Torino, lit=Italian Automobiles Factory of Turin) is an Italian automobile manufacturer, formerly part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and since 2021 a subsidiary ...
'' (1923)
* ''
Felicitas Grolandin'' (1923)
* ''
The Man at Midnight
''The Man at Midnight'' (French: ''Le monsieur de minuit'') is a 1931 French comedy film directed by Harry Lachman and starring Jean Weber, Josseline Gaël and Marcel Simon.Cook p.514 It was the French-language version of the British film '' A ...
'' (1924)
* ''
The Dice Game of Life
''The Dice Game of Life'' (German:''Des Lebens Würfelspiel'') is a 1925 German silent film directed by Heinz Paul and starring Frida Richard, Hella Moja and Margarete Lanner.Grange p.203
The film's art direction was by Botho Hoefer and Bernh ...
'' (1925)
* ''
Department Store Princess
''Department Store Princess'' (German: ''Die Warenhausprinzessin'') is a 1926 German silent film directed by Heinz Paul and starring Hella Moja, Hans Albers and Paul Heidemann. No copies of the film are known to survive.
The film's sets were ...
'' (1926)
* ''
The False Prince'' (1927)
* ''
U-9 Weddigen'' (1927)
* ''
The Carousel of Death'' (1928)
* ''
Marriage in Name Only
''Marriage in Name Only'' (german: Namensheirat) is a 1930 German drama film directed by Heinz Paul and starring Evelyn Holt, Erika Dannhoff, and Wolfgang Zilzer.Bock & Bergfelder p. 397
The film's sets were designed by Robert A. Dietrich
Ro ...
'' (1930)
* ''
The Love Market'' (1930)
* ''
The Other Side'' (1931)
* ''
Student Life in Merry Springtime'' (1931)
* ''
Marshal Forwards'' (1932)
* ''
The Four Musketeers'' (1934)
* ''
Comrades at Sea'' (1938)
References
Bibliography
*
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moja, Hella
1896 births
German women screenwriters
German film producers
German film actresses
German silent film actresses
20th-century German actresses
Mass media people from Königsberg
20th-century German screenwriters
1951 suicides
Suicides in Germany