Paula Wessely, 93, an Actress With Roles in Nazi Propaganda
By ALAN RIDING
Published: May 15, 2000
PARIS, May 14— Paula Wessely, a legendary Austrian stage and screen actress whose postwar career flourished despite her having starred in several Nazi propaganda movies, died on Thursday at a hospital in Vienna. She was 93.
Ms. Wessely, whose distinctive voice was immediately recognizable to several generations of German speakers, seemed equally at home in classical and modern drama, as convincing in Schiller's ''Mary Stuart'' as she was in Tennessee Williams's ''Glass Menagerie.''
Her electric presence prompted the novelist Thomas Mann to write, ''She holds a place in the small gallery of women who, unwittingly, have moved my heart.''
Born in Vienna on Jan. 20, 1907, she was still a teenager when she first appeared on stage at the Vienna Volkstheater in 1924. On her 80th birthday she demonstrated that she could still draw a packed house when she did a public reading at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.
Before and during World War II she played leading roles in numerous German-language movies sponsored by Joseph Goebbels's Nazi propaganda machine, most notoriously a popular 1941 film called ''Heimkehr'' (''Homecoming''). She often portrayed strong-willed German women capable of overcoming all adversity.
After the war she expressed regret for her collaboration with the Nazis and, while some critics considered her repentance less than sincere, Austrians embraced her anew, allowing her to enjoy a still more glittering postwar career as the grande dame of the Vienna Burgtheater.
Although she also appeared in many postwar movies, she refused invitations to work in Hollywood and her reputation never reached far beyond the German-speaking world.