Biography
Valeska Gert (11 January 1892 – c. 16 March 1978) was a German dancer, cabaret artist and actress. Born Gertrud Valesca Samosch in Berlin to a Jewish family, she trained in dance and acting and began performing solo grotesque dances and pantomimes in the 1910s and 1920s.
She appeared in several silent films, including Joyless Street (1925), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) and The Threepenny Opera (1931). After being banned from performing in Germany in 1933, she went into exile in London and later the United States, where she ran cabarets. She returned to Europe after the war and opened further cabarets in Berlin and on Sylt.
In the 1960s she resumed film work, playing Pijma in Federico Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits (1965). Later roles included appearances in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s television series Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (1973) and Volker Schlöndorff’s Coup de Grâce (1976).
