Elfi von Dassanowsky
Encyclopedia
Elfriede "Elfi" von Dassanowsky (February 2, 1924October 2, 2007) was an Austrian-American singer, pianist
, film producer
and humanitarian.
, the daughter of Franz Leopold von Dassanowsky, a civil servant in the Austrian Trade Ministry, and Anna (née Grünwald). Her father knew writer Hermann Broch
from Vienna's café society
in the 1920s and was one of the inspirations for the character of Herr von Pasenow in Broch's novel The Sleepwalkers
. A piano prodigy
at the age of 5, Elfi attended the Vienna
Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (known as the "Englische Fräuleins") and became at age 15, the youngest woman admitted to Vienna
's Academy of Music and Performing Arts to that date as the protégé of concert pianist, Emil von Sauer
. While a student, film director Karl Hartl
chose her to instruct Curd Jürgens
in piano, so that he could play the instrument on screen in Hartl's Mozart biopic and a Willi Forst
musical (it served him well beyond the era, to the 1971 Hollywood film The Mephisto Waltz). But Dassanowsky's studies and early career were halted for extended labor service when she rejected membership in Nazi
organizations. The powerful UFA
Studio in Berlin
offered her a film contract in 1944, which she also declined.
.With senior partners August Diglas and Emmerich Hanus, the studio created such German-language classics as Die Glücksmühle (The Mill of Happiness, 1946), Dr. Rosin (1949), and Märchen vom Glück (Kiss Me, Casanova, 1949), and gave Gunther Philipp
and Nadja Tiller
their first screen roles. She starred in opera
s, operetta
s, theatrical dramas and comedies, helped initiate several theater groups, was announcer for Allied Forces Broadcasting and the BBC
, toured West Germany
in a one-woman-show and gave master classes in voice and piano. During this period, Dassanowsky also modeled exclusively for Austrian painter Franz Xaver Wolf (1896–1990), whose work featuring her image is now in museum and private collections. Through art director Federico Pallavicini she encouraged an issue of the short-lived American magazine, Flair (edited by Fleur Cowles
) to cover the arts in postwar Vienna, and modeled for the planned edition, but the publication folded before print. An expert in the Ignace Paderewski piano technique, her musical pedagogy continued in the 1950s in Canada
and New York
, where she also married and had a son and daughter. At this time she turned to design and created a prototype for woman's leather day coat, which is now in the collection of The Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien
). She divorced in the late 1970s and although she never remarried, she was briefly linked with author and actor, Prince Heinrich Starhemberg
(aka Henry Gregor, 1934–1997) in the mid 1990s until his death.
In Hollywood in the 1960s, she resisted becoming a trendy Euro-starlet and preferred to remain behind the camera as a vocal coach for director/producer Otto Preminger
. In 1962, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. A successful Los Angeles businesswoman, in 1999, she re-established Belvedere Film as a Los Angeles/Vienna-based production company with her son, Robert
. She was executive producer of the award-winning dramatic short film, Semmelweis (2001), the spy-comedy, Wilson Chance (2005), and several works in progress at the time of her passing, including the documentary Felix Austria! aka The Archduke and Herbert Hinkel (to be released), and a screen adaptation (with her son) of the antiwar Austrian novel, Mars im Widder by Alexander Lernet-Holenia
.
Recognized internationally for her unique work as a pioneering woman in film production and as a multi-talent in postwar Austria
n arts and culture, von Dassanowsky is the only Austrian woman to receive the Women’s International Center’s prestigious Living Legacy Award, and has been honored with the UNESCO Mozart Medal
, the Austrian Decoration of Merit, the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
, the Austrian Film Archive's Lifetime Achievement Medal, by the State of California
and the cities of Vienna
and Los Angeles
, where von Dassanowsky lived since 1962. Additionally, she is reported to have been nominated for the honorary Right Livelihood Award
in the late 1990s.
. She was flown to Queens Hospital in Honolulu and part of her left leg had to be amputated. She was reported to be recovering well in rehabilitation in Los Angeles
and was expected to continue her efforts in film production as well as arts and UNESCO
promotion. According to news reports, amputee celebrity Heather Mills took a personal interest in her rehabilitation. However, Dassanowsky died October 2, 2007 in Los Angeles of heart failure. She was interred in a Grave of Honor at the Zentralfriedhof
in Vienna on July 25, 2008.
The first phase of this project was complete in late January 2009, when the Elfi von Dassanowsky Fund initiated its program of charitable contributions to non-profit organizations in the U.S. and Europe.
The Elfi von Dassanowsky Rose (a tea-rose - floribunda
hybrid) also known as the "Elfi" was created by Brad Jalbert of Canada in 2009.
The first Elfi von Dassanowsky Prize for work by female filmmakers was presented to Norwegian artist Inger Lise Hansen for Parallax (2009) at the Vienna Independent Shorts
Film Festival in June 2010.
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and humanitarian.
Early life
Elfi von Dassanowsky was born Elfriede Maria Elisabeth Charlotte Dassanowsky in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, the daughter of Franz Leopold von Dassanowsky, a civil servant in the Austrian Trade Ministry, and Anna (née Grünwald). Her father knew writer Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch was a 20th century Austrian writer, considered one of the major Modernists.-Life:Broch was born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately...
from Vienna's café society
Café Society
Café society was the collective description for the so-called "Beautiful People" and "Bright Young Things" who gathered in fashionable cafes and restaurants in New York, Paris, and London beginning in the late 19th century...
in the 1920s and was one of the inspirations for the character of Herr von Pasenow in Broch's novel The Sleepwalkers
The Sleepwalkers (Broch)
The Sleepwalkers is a novel by the Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch...
. A piano prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
at the age of 5, Elfi attended the Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (known as the "Englische Fräuleins") and became at age 15, the youngest woman admitted to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
's Academy of Music and Performing Arts to that date as the protégé of concert pianist, Emil von Sauer
Emil von Sauer
Emil Georg Conrad von Sauer was a notable German composer, pianist, score editor, and music teacher. He was a pupil of Franz Liszt and one of the most distinguished pianists of his generation...
. While a student, film director Karl Hartl
Karl Hartl
Karl Hartl was an Austrian film director.-Life:Born in Vienna, Hartl began his film career at the Austrian Sascha-Film company of Alexander Kolowrat and from 1919 was assistant to the Hungarian director Alexander Korda...
chose her to instruct Curd Jürgens
Curd Jürgens
Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens was a German-Austrian stage and film actor. He was usually billed in English-speaking films as Curt Jurgens.-Early life:...
in piano, so that he could play the instrument on screen in Hartl's Mozart biopic and a Willi Forst
Willi Forst
Willi Forst, born Wilhelm Anton Frohs was an Austrian actor, screenwriter, film director, film producer and singer...
musical (it served him well beyond the era, to the 1971 Hollywood film The Mephisto Waltz). But Dassanowsky's studies and early career were halted for extended labor service when she rejected membership in Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
organizations. The powerful UFA
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
Studio in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
offered her a film contract in 1944, which she also declined.
Career
In 1946, von Dassanowsky made her opera debut as Susanna in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Stadttheater St. Pölten and created in concerts for the Allied High Command. She remains one of the few women in film history, and at age 22 one of the youngest, to co-found a film studio—Belvedere Film—the first new studio facility in postwar ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
.With senior partners August Diglas and Emmerich Hanus, the studio created such German-language classics as Die Glücksmühle (The Mill of Happiness, 1946), Dr. Rosin (1949), and Märchen vom Glück (Kiss Me, Casanova, 1949), and gave Gunther Philipp
Gunther Philipp
-Selected filmography:* Der Schuß durchs Fenster * The Count of Luxemburg * Bombs on Monte Carlo * The White Horse Inn * Season in Salzburg * Mariandl * Mariandl's Homecoming...
and Nadja Tiller
Nadja Tiller
Nadja Tiller is an Austrian actress. She was one of the most popular German actresses of the 1950s and 1960s.She won the Miss Austria competition in 1949, a national beauty pageant for unmarried women in Austria. She had her major film debut in 1952 in 'Märchen vom Glück .In 1955, she acted...
their first screen roles. She starred in opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s, operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
s, theatrical dramas and comedies, helped initiate several theater groups, was announcer for Allied Forces Broadcasting and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, toured West Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in a one-woman-show and gave master classes in voice and piano. During this period, Dassanowsky also modeled exclusively for Austrian painter Franz Xaver Wolf (1896–1990), whose work featuring her image is now in museum and private collections. Through art director Federico Pallavicini she encouraged an issue of the short-lived American magazine, Flair (edited by Fleur Cowles
Fleur Cowles
Fleur Fenton Cowles was an American writer, editor and artist best known as the creative force behind the short-lived Flair magazine.-Personal:...
) to cover the arts in postwar Vienna, and modeled for the planned edition, but the publication folded before print. An expert in the Ignace Paderewski piano technique, her musical pedagogy continued in the 1950s in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where she also married and had a son and daughter. At this time she turned to design and created a prototype for woman's leather day coat, which is now in the collection of The Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien
Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien
The Museum of Applied Arts or just MAK, a short version of its German name Museum für angewandte Kunst is located in Vienna, Austria.The museum is located in the 1st district of Vienna .-External links:*...
). She divorced in the late 1970s and although she never remarried, she was briefly linked with author and actor, Prince Heinrich Starhemberg
Starhemberg
----Starhemberg is the name of an Austrian noble family hailing from Upper Austria, specifically Steyr and Steinbach, who were Counts of the Empire from 1643, raised to princes in 1765...
(aka Henry Gregor, 1934–1997) in the mid 1990s until his death.
In Hollywood in the 1960s, she resisted becoming a trendy Euro-starlet and preferred to remain behind the camera as a vocal coach for director/producer Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
. In 1962, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. A successful Los Angeles businesswoman, in 1999, she re-established Belvedere Film as a Los Angeles/Vienna-based production company with her son, Robert
Robert von Dassanowsky
Robert von Dassanowsky FRHistS, FRSA is an Austrian-American academic, writer, film and cultural historian, and producer...
. She was executive producer of the award-winning dramatic short film, Semmelweis (2001), the spy-comedy, Wilson Chance (2005), and several works in progress at the time of her passing, including the documentary Felix Austria! aka The Archduke and Herbert Hinkel (to be released), and a screen adaptation (with her son) of the antiwar Austrian novel, Mars im Widder by Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Alexander Lernet-Holenia was an Austrian poet, novelist, dramaturgist and writer of screenplays and historical studies who produced a heterogeneous literary opus that included poesy, psychological novels describing the intrusion of otherworldly or unreal experiences into reality, and recreational...
.
Recognized internationally for her unique work as a pioneering woman in film production and as a multi-talent in postwar Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n arts and culture, von Dassanowsky is the only Austrian woman to receive the Women’s International Center’s prestigious Living Legacy Award, and has been honored with the UNESCO Mozart Medal
UNESCO Mozart Medal
The UNESCO Mozart Medal is an award named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and administered by UNESCO.-Recipients:* Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 1991* Alicia Terzian, 1995* Elfi von Dassanowsky, 1996...
, the Austrian Decoration of Merit, the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an Order of France, established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture, and confirmed as part of the Ordre national du Mérite by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963...
, the Austrian Film Archive's Lifetime Achievement Medal, by the State of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
and the cities of Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, where von Dassanowsky lived since 1962. Additionally, she is reported to have been nominated for the honorary Right Livelihood Award
Right Livelihood Award
The Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize", is a prestigious international award to honour those "working on practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today". The prize was established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, and is...
in the late 1990s.
Death
While in Kona, Hawaii in July 2007, Dassanowsky suffered a life-threatening embolismEmbolism
In medicine, an embolism is the event of lodging of an embolus into a narrow capillary vessel of an arterial bed which causes a blockage in a distant part of the body.Embolization is...
. She was flown to Queens Hospital in Honolulu and part of her left leg had to be amputated. She was reported to be recovering well in rehabilitation in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and was expected to continue her efforts in film production as well as arts and UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
promotion. According to news reports, amputee celebrity Heather Mills took a personal interest in her rehabilitation. However, Dassanowsky died October 2, 2007 in Los Angeles of heart failure. She was interred in a Grave of Honor at the Zentralfriedhof
Zentralfriedhof
The Zentralfriedhof is one of the largest cemeteries in the world, largest by number of interred in Europe and most famous cemetery among Vienna's nearly 50 cemeteries.-Name and location:...
in Vienna on July 25, 2008.
Foundation and posthumous recognition
In November 2007, the planned establishment of the Elfi von Dassanowsky Foundation was announced in Vienna. It would continue the pioneering and creative spirit of the late artist by developing awards and grants for emerging women filmmakers.The first phase of this project was complete in late January 2009, when the Elfi von Dassanowsky Fund initiated its program of charitable contributions to non-profit organizations in the U.S. and Europe.
The Elfi von Dassanowsky Rose (a tea-rose - floribunda
Floribunda
Floribunda may refer to:*A popular rose cultivar group, see Floribunda *A former cactus genus now placed in Cipocereus* Cassia floribunda, a synonym for Senna septemtrionalis, a plant species...
hybrid) also known as the "Elfi" was created by Brad Jalbert of Canada in 2009.
The first Elfi von Dassanowsky Prize for work by female filmmakers was presented to Norwegian artist Inger Lise Hansen for Parallax (2009) at the Vienna Independent Shorts
Vienna Independent Shorts
Vienna Independent Shorts is an international short film festival held annually in May in Vienna. It is the largest short film festival in Austria.- History :...
Film Festival in June 2010.
External links
- Women's International Center-Living Legacy Award
- BiografiA
- Film Reference biography
- Elfi von Dassanowsky in the Encyclopedia of Austria at AEIOU
- FemBio Biography
- Austrian Press Agency release August 12, 2007
- Austrian Press Agency release October 1, 2007
- Austrian Information on EvD Foundation
- Elfi von Dassanowsky Foundation