Ida Ehre - Biography

Biography

Ehre’s father was a hazzan. She learned acting at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. She made her acting debut at the Stadttheater in Bielitz, and appeared in theatres in Budapest, Cottbus, Bonn, Königsberg, Stuttgart and at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. From 1930, she appeared at the Lessingtheater in Berlin.

In Nazi Germany, she was not allowed to work as an actress because she was Jewish, and so she helped in the gynaecolological practice of her husband, Dr. Bernhard Heyde (1899–1978), in Böblingen. After the Kristallnacht, she planned to emigrate to Chile with her husband and her daughter Ruth (born 20 October 1927 in Mannheim), but the ship they were on was ordered to return to Hamburg because of the outbreak of World War II. She was later arrested by the Gestapo and interned in the concentration camp Fuhlsbüttel for six weeks.

After the war, on 10 December 1945 she opened the Hamburger Kammerspiele theatre in the Hartungstraße in Rotherbaum in a theatre building that had been used by the Jüdischer Kulturbund until 1941. In addition to modern German drama such as Wolfgang Borchert‘s ‘’The Man Outside’’ (German: ‘’Draußen vor der Tür’’), she brought modern pieces by playwrights from other countries for the first time in Germany, including plays by Jean Anouilh, T. S. Eliot, Jean Giraudoux, Jean-Paul Sartre and Thornton Wilder. She continued managing the theatre until her death from a heart attack in 1989. After her death, she was given an honorary grave in Ohlsdorf Cemetery next to Gustaf Gründgens.