Biography:

Jutta Hoffmann was born in Ammendorf, near Halle, on March 3, 1941. She studied at the Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg from 1959 to 1962, before starting to perform at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin (1960-65, 1969-73), the Deutsche Theater Berlin (1965-67, 2000) and the Berliner Ensemble (1973-83).

She made her film debut in Das Rabauken-Kabarett in 1960. In 1965, she made a name for herself as a film actress playing the lead in Hermann Zschoche’s feature film Karla, which was banned and did not premiere until 1990. Despite such problems, Hoffmann gained the attention of audiences and the film industry through performances in literary adaptations, such as Hans-Joachim Kasprzik’s television version of Hans Fallada’s Kleiner Mann–was nun? (1967) and Egon Günther’s television adaptation of Arnold Zweig’s Young Woman of 1914 (1970). Der Dritte, also directed by Egon Günther, became a phenomenal success and won Hoffmann the Best Actress award at the 1972 Venice Film Festival.

Although she was still given important roles, later in the 1970s Hoffman was mostly limited to period films due to increasingly restrictive East German censorship; this was especially true after she protested, along with many others, against the expatriation of the dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann in 1976. Two exceptions that stand out, however, were socially critical films by Frank Beyer: Das Versteck and Geschlossene Gesellschaft.

In 1983, she left for West Germany. Once there, she played at top theaters including the Freie Volksbühne in West Berlin, the Munich Kammerspiele, and the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, as well as at the Salzburg Festival. In addition to stage appearances, Hoffmann continued to act in film and television. She taught performing arts at Hamburg’s Film Academy for Music and Theater (1992-2006). In 1997, she was in the internationally successful comedy Bandits, by Katja von Garnier. She also played Commissioner Wanda Rosenbaum in the popular television crime series Polizeiruf: 110 (1999-2002). In 2007, she appeared in the recent award-winning television film about an East German border guard, An die Grenze. Jutta Hoffmann now lives in Potsdam.

Festivals & Awards:

Bibliography & More:

Warnecke, Peter & Birgit Scholz. Jutta Hoffmann: Schauspielerin. Berlin: Das Neue Berlin. 2012.