Biography
Thea Gabriele von Harbou was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director and actress. Born in Tauperlitz, Bavaria, in 1888, she trained at the Luisenstift school in Dresden and began her career as an actress on the stage in Düsseldorf, Weimar, Chemnitz and Aachen before concentrating on writing from around 1914.
She is best known for writing the 1925 novel Metropolis and its 1927 screenplay adaptation, both for the film directed by Fritz Lang, to whom she was married from 1922 until their divorce in 1933. She also wrote the screenplay for M (1931) and collaborated with Lang on several other films, including Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922) and Die Nibelungen (1924). Many of her screenplays originated as novels.
Von Harbou remained in Germany after 1933 and continued to write for film and publish novels until her death in West Berlin in 1954.
