Ilse Werner


Ilse Werner was a German actress of Dutch descent, singer and musical whistler.

Life

She was born in Batavia to a Dutch father, merchant and plantation owner, and a German mother. Werner was a Dutch citizen by birth; although she had her greatest successes in Germany, mainly during the time of the Third Reich, she did not assume German citizenship until 1955.
Arriving in Frankfurt, Germany at the age of 10, Werner's family in 1934 moved to Vienna, where she attended the Max Reinhardt Seminar drama school and gave her debut at the Theater in der Josefstadt in 1937. She later made her name at the legendary UFA Studios near Berlin. She starred in the popular wartime films "Die schwedische Nachtigall" and "Wir machen Musik", as well as in the musical drama Große Freiheit Nr. 7. She was the hostess of a popular television show of Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow from 1941, titled "Wir senden Frohsinn - Wir spenden Freude".
Having briefly been barred from performing by the Allies at the end of World War II, due to her alleged role in Nazi propaganda, she returned to the big screen in the 1950s where she excelled in dramatic character roles. She also acted in theatre, worked as a dubbing actor, and recorded numerous songs and whistling performances.
Werner had her last appearance on German TV in 2001. She lived impoverished in a retirement home in Lübeck, where she died peacefully in her sleep on 7 August 2005, having suffered from pneumonia. Her last wish was to have her ashes scattered in Potsdam-Babelsberg.

Selected filmography

After the war, she became an active voice dubber, dubbing foreign films in German.