Karl Vollmöller

Wrote the screenplay for the film that made Marlene Dietrich a star, Der blaue Engel (1930).

To Karl Vollmöller's last novels belong "Schmutziges Geld" (1925), "Acht Mirakel der Heiligen Jungfrau Maria" (1928), "The Younger Brother of Christ" (1945) and "The Last Miracle" (1949).

Author of the spectacle-pantomime "Das Mirakel", first produced in England in 1911, filmed twice in 1912, and brought to the Olympia Hall London and Broadway in 1924 as "The Miracle". This was an adaptation of an old legend about a nun and the Virgin Mary. For the 1959 film version of "The Miracle", dialogue and new characters were added from Spanish writer Zorrilla y Moral's play "Leyendas", and the pantomime was turned into a standard Hollywood religious epic.

From 1904 Vollmöller translated classical dramas by Sophokles and Aischylos into German. His Antigone and Oresteia adaptions were staged several times by the famous theatre director Max Reinhardt, the beginning of a long-term successful collaboration.

Karl Vollmöller got in touch with the world of the theater from 1903 and he wrote many plays and some of them became successful worldwide. To these works belong "Giulia, dia Amerikanerin" (1905), "Der deutsche Graf" (1906), "Antigone" (1906), "Wieland" (1911) and especially "Das Mirakel" (1911) which was a worldwide success in the 20s as a musical.

The technical progress fascinated Karl Vollmöller similarly to the literature. He already was active as an automobile racer from 1902 and he took part in races for several years. He also took part in the first rally which led around the world. He finished third.

Vollmöller also carried out own excavations at Megara, together with Richard Delbrück. At the same time, he continued his poetry, maintaining a lively exchange with Stefan George, André Gide, August Strindberg, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose 1901 play Francesca da Rimini he translated into German.

From 1899 he attended classical archaeology lectures in Bonn where he obtained his doctorate in 1901. At that time he spent the summers in Sorrento, Italy and published poems in periodicals like Simplicissimus, Pan, and Stefan George's Blätter für die Kunst.

In 1898 he journeyed Greece together with the poet Max Dauthendey and two years later joined the excavations at Pergamon led by Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Alexander Conze, Theodor Wiegand, and Paul Wolters.

He published his first novel in 1897 with "Die Sturm- und Drangperiode und der moderne Realismus". At the beginnig of the 20th century followed other novels with "Parcival - Die frühen Gärten" (02) and "Catherina, Gräfin von Armagnac" (03). At this time he was also active as an archaeologist in Greece where he worked together with Wilhelm Dörpfeld among others.

Karl Vollmöller wrote and published his first poems in the middle of the 1890s, beside it he studied art and painting as well as the classics.

He was born into a wealthy family. His father (Robert Vollmöller (1849-1911) presided over one of the biggest textile enterprise in Europe and his mother ( Emilie, née Behr (1852-1894) campaigned for the equal rights for women.

His uncle Karl Vollmöller (1848-1922) was a notable Romance philologist and Anglicist; his sister Mathilde Vollmöller (1876-1943) married the painter Hans Purrmann in 1912.