Minna Stern (20 March 1894 – 25 May 1982), known professionally as Hermine Sterler, was a German-American actress whose career spanned both the silent and the talkie film eras on two continents.
She debuted in 1918 at the Residenztheater Hannover and later performed in Berlin, where she appeared at the Kleinen Theater ("Little Theater"). She played a saloon lady and, from 1921, often appeared in German silent film. She flourished as a character actor in roles of young wives and mothers. In 1930, she appeared as Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna in Rasputin, Demon with Women.
In 1933, a German government decree was enacted by Joseph Goebbels under the auspices of a newly created agency called Die Reichskulturkammer. The decree stipulated that Jewish actors were, among other things, prohibited from performing on German stage.
Sterler, who was a Jew, relocated to Vienna in 1933, where she continued to work in theater and cinema. The Anschluss of Austria ended her artistic career there. Sterler next moved to London. In 1938, she immigrated to the United States from Zurich under her birth name Minna Stern. Film director Wilhelm Dieterle gave Sterler her first role in American cinema.[2]
During World War II and after, Sterler played mostly small roles in Hollywood productions portraying German or other European women. In the 1944 anti-Nazi film The Hitler Gang, she played the wife of Ernst Hanfstaengl.
Torn Curtain (1966) - Old Woman Entering at Bus Stop (uncredited) (final film role)
Family
Sterler (née Minna Stern) was born 20 March 1894 in Bad Cannstatt, Stuttgart, to Max Stern (born 1853) and Bertha Wormser (née Bertha Emilia Wormser; 1865–1936), both of whom married each other 5 July 1888.
Kester, Bernadette. Film Front Weimar: Representations of the First World War in German Films of the Weimar Period (1919-1933). Amsterdam University Press, 2003.
