Eva Kotthaus

Eva Kotthaus initially failed to make much headway attending an acting school in her home town. She had a brief spell trying her hand at studying photography, but soon plucked up the courage for a second go at her chosen profession and enrolled at the Otto Falckenberg Drama Academy in Munich where her teachers included well-known thespians Friedrich Domin and Siegfried Lowitz. Following her graduation, Eva made her stage debut in 1954 and soon established herself as a versatile character actress at several prestigious playhouses, including the Maxim-Gorki-Theater in the former East Berlin, and, from 1957, at the renowned Deutsches Theater in the West. She broke into the movies even before her theatrical career had properly gotten off the ground, her first roles being in Defa (East German) productions. Eva was cast as the female lead in just her second picture, Der Teufel vom Mühlenberg (1955), a fanciful adventure based on a medieval legend. The result was a box-office hit which attra