Work-in-progress (Working title: Gift)
Two Purchase College Faculty Support Awards.
A short film centered on my great-great aunt Therese Giehse (1898-1975).
At age 22, Therese changed her last name from Gift, meaning ‘poison’ in German, to Giehse. That same year she began her career, together with siblings Erika Mann and Klaus Mann, as the founder of the Munich anti-Nazi literary cabaret The Pfeffermühle.
Giehse, an actress so esteemed for her stage and screen work, her image donned the German postage stamp in 1988.
Referred to by playwright Bertolt Brecht as “the greatest living European actress,” Giehse (while in exile) played the first Mother Courage in the world premiere of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children in 1941 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich.
Schauspielhaus Zürich in 2024
While there have been several documentaries about Giehse’s life, my perspective as a first generation American of refugee parents will be a commentary, as I examine her legendary personal and artistic choices she made to confront and survive fascism, antisemitism and homophobia. As this project continues to evolve, I am exploring generational trauma and epigenetics, and the consequences of war in one family.
In-person meetings began in the summer of 2024 in Zurich with Gunna Wendt, author of Erika und Therese: Erika Mann und Therese Giehse – Eine Liebe zwischen Kunst und Krieg (A love between art and war). Read our discussion in the Literarurportal Bayern.
In Amsterdam, I met with Viktoria Lewosky (dramaturg Theatre Oberhausen), who interviewed my mother and me for her 2022 podcast Therese Giehse and Us sponsored by the Jewish Museum in Munich.
Giehse in film.
From my family’s photo album.
In 2025, additional photos and documents were included in the archives at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris.
I won't let you spoil my war for me. Destroys the weak, does it? Well, what does peace do for'em, huh? War feeds its people better." (Mother Courage and her Children, Bertolt Brecht)