She is probably the only diva that the German film and television industry has produced in the last two or three decades. Hannelore Elsner was already in her 50s, at an age when other actresses are being pushed into supporting roles, when a number of young directors discovered their almost iconic appeal and put them into great, theatrical, erotic roles.

Her face, which was of a beauty that obviously could not affect life even in its devastating moments, blew up both the meager screens of the televisions and the small screens of the art-house cinemas. Elsner showed feelings in her face that others fear: greed, lust and unfulfilled yearning. Hatred, shame and endless hubris. Everything had to go.

Elsner never wished for sympathy in her roles, she did not want to please, she wanted to overwhelm. Where German television and German cinema often crouched, misrepresented and went around politely, Elsner often took the full risk. Her greatest works were one big "Fuck you!" in the Mittelstandsvisage of the German film enterprise including its mediocrity dictates.

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Hannelore Elsner: Merciless good

For almost 60 years she made her way through the wage-and-bread business: from early German starter's pamphlets such as "Pepe, the Paukerschreck" on inevitable TV crime fiction - with the series "The Commissioner" she formulated in the nineties casual play the role of tough investigator - up to the Bushido biopic "Times change you".

Elsner's initial impetus for a new risk course in 2000 was the biographical drama "The Untouchables", in which the then very young, very hurt, very dangerous director Oskar Roehler worked on the relationship with his mother, the legendary writer Gisela Elsner. The film received the German Film Award in Gold, Elsner was honored at the ceremony as Best Actress.

Elsner is in the title role as an egomaniac through a Berlin, in which just the wall had just been opened. It looks like a fortress of concocted hair and mascara walls: The country may have been close to reunification - the mother was not ready to reunite with her son. "The Untouchables" was charged with Freudian - and down to the last image of this cruel, tender, in beautiful black and white photographed film.

Dive on the roulette table

Freudian, of course, much could be explained in the work of Hannelore Elsner. The directors she has worked with over the last two decades could often have been her sons. In 2002, she shot "My Last Movie" with Oliver Hirschbiegel, a quasi-solo piece in which, as a terminally ill actress, she takes stock of life in front of the camera. In 2005 she shot Erhard Riedlsperger for the TV movie "Die Spielerin" in the dive on the roulette table in the Casino of Travemünde in scene. A female variant of Fjodor Dostojewski's "The Player", classic Elsner home cinema: Everything on red, everything on death.

As early as 2001 she had shot "End of the season" with Stefan Krohmer, where she wrestles with her daughter in a subtle, perfidious way as a mother suffering from cancer. Hannelore Elsner always acted awesome mercilessly. Even and especially towards yourself, also and especially when it came to the last things. Often she played mothers, never played maternal in the traditional sense. Often their films were about death, always a celebration of life.

One often forgets: her strange talent was enormous - just because it was in contrast to her cool or perceived as cool outrage. In 2004, she was part of the historic moment when Dani Levy released the anarcho-comedy "Alles zu Zucker!" brought Jewish humor back into German film.

The cheeky ghost

Two years earlier, she was on the side of Iris Berben - perhaps the only colleague who could compete with her as a diva - in the RTL production "Drive to hell, sister!" played, directed once again Oskar Roehler. The film was a kind of unleashed Geronto slapstick, a reissue of the Bette-Davis versus Joan Crawford classic, "What really happened to Baby Jane?" for German private television: Trash at the highest level.

Most recently, the actress was seen in the Moshammer biography "The Great Rudolph", where she, as a mother, organizes the career of the fashion designer. And of course in Doris Dörrie's spiritual drama "Cherry Blossoms and Demons", in which she, as a lighthearted ghost, makes hell hell out of her son.

Death will not harm her fame: on Sunday Hannelore Elsner, the last diva of the German film company, died after a short illness at the age of 76 years.