Probably born on October 18, 1899, in Vienna, Grete Jacobsen was trained by the actor and later director of the Burgtheater, Albert Heine. She made her debut in 1917 at the Volksbühne in Vienna, but in 1919 moved to the Munich Kammerspiele, directed by Otto Falckenberg. After having mainly played child roles in Vienna because of her small stature and slender frame, she now took on leading roles, including Eliza in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and Viola in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. She also appeared in silent films, including Erik Jan Hanussen’s 1919 crime film Hypnose. Hanussens erstes Abenteuer, Max Obal’s The Grey Magpie in 1920, and Otto Linnekogel’s Die Talfahrt des Severin Hoyer in 1922.
Munich also proved to be an important chapter in her personal life, as she met the actor Erwin Faber at the Kammerspiele, whom she married in 1921. Their daughter Monica Faber was born in 1926 and also pursued a career as an actress after the war.
In 1925, the couple moved to Berlin, where Jacobsen was engaged over the following years at the Lessing Theater, the Wallner Theater, the Theater am Magdeburger Platz, and finally the Deutsches Theater. She also made guest appearances at the Berlin State Theater and the Zurich Stadttheater. In 1932, she and her husband moved to Darmstadt, where both were engaged at the Hessian Landestheater. As a “salon lady and sentimental character,” the Darmstädter Tagblatt praised in September of 1932, she was a “representative of strong artistic individuality.”
The Nazis’ seizure of power brought her career in Germany to an end, as Jacobsen was classified as a “half-Jew” according to Nazi racial ideology. Together with her husband and their child, she moved to Düsseldorf, where Erwin Faber had received an engagement at the Städtisches Theater. In 1944, the family moved to Salzburg, where Jacobsen was able to find work again after the war. She initially worked as a news announcer for the Rot-Weiß-Rot radio station and subsequently taught speech at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
In 1950, the actress returned to the Munich Kammerspiele. There she achieved success in Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm, Ferdinand Raimund’s Der Bauer als Millionär, and Paul Burkhard’s popular musical comedy The Firework. Grete Jacobsen died on March 28, 2000, in Munich.
1899 Vienna
2000 Munich