MARIA LEIKO – diva of German silent cinema (1887-1937)

“The beautiful Maria Leiko from the German theatre!” – said newspapers of her time, however she was a Latvian and she played her first theatre roles on the stages of Riga. After the revolution of 1905, Maria Leiko emigrated to Copenhagen and later to Berlin and Vienna. There in 1910, she graduates from the Vienna Royal Academy and since then plays the leading parts in several German theatres in Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, etc. She stars in the films directed by her husband Jānis Gūters as well as F.W. Murnaw and other directors. Her partners were such well-known actors as Konrad Veidt, Fritz Kortner and Emil Jannings. After Hitler\'s coup-d-etat she returns to Latvia and later moves to Moscow, where in 1937 the members of the Latvian theatre Skatuve (The Stage) were arrested and Maria Leiko hangs herself in the prison cell.