Renate Müller

According to Channel 4 documentary "Sex and the Swastika", aired in February 2009, she jumped from a Berlin hospital window where she was being treated for a knee injury or drug addiction.

Her life was adapted for the screen in 1960 with the actress Ruth Leuwerik. The movie was called "Liebling der Götter" (Sweetheart of the Gods)(1960).

She became less cooperative, however, over the years, especially when they began putting her in propaganda films, such as Togger (1937).

Renate Müller had to put her career aside in 1934 because of a serious illness (probaply epilepsy) and acted only seldom in front of the camera.

After making Sunshine Susie (1932) in England, she returned to Germany and was delayed by anti-German French officials for a short time in Paris. The incident was used by Dennis Wheatley as a basis for his short story, "Espionage". The story and a short discussion of the incident are included in Wheatley's short story collection Mediterranean Nights.

The highlights of her rather brief career were The Office Girl (1931), which made her a star, and Viktor and Viktoria (1936), the widely popular romantic story of a woman who disguises herself as a man. In the mid-30s, however, the entertainment industry was becoming acutely affected by the rise of Hitler. While the outraged Dietrich turned her back on her country and became a U. S. citizen, Renate stayed true and remained in her homeland despite her intense dislike of the bleak political situation.

With the movies "Liebling der Götter" (1930), "Die Privatsekretärin" (1931), "Saison in Kairo" (1933), "Viktor und Viktoria" (1933), "Die englische Heirat" (1934) and "Allotria" (1936) she reached the first Guards of German actresses.

The film called for her already in 1928, when the pictures were flickering silent over the screen.

According to Uwe Klöckner-Draga in his book "Renate Müller - Ihr Leben ein Drahtseilakt" : on April 3 Goebbels wrote in his diary: "Renate tells me her tale of woe. She is a sick woman". On the 6th he mentions that she has been interrogated in a very dishonoring way and on the 25th of June: "Renate Müller! I help her." At the end of September - according to her sister Gabriele - Renate was drunk and sitting on a window sill when she lost balance.

Highly popular German star Renate Muller was the toast of late 20s Berlin along with the legendary Marlene Dietrich. Unlike Dietrich, however, she suffered at the hands of the Nazis and died under mysterious circumstances. Renate was born in Munich on April 26, 1906, the daughter of a newspaper editor-in-chief and a painter. As a child she lived a privileged, well-to-do life in pre-Nazi Germany. An early interest in acting and poetry led her to the Harzer Bergtheater under the tutelage of Georg Wilhelm Pabst, one of her professors at school. By the late 20s she had established herself as one of Berlin's most active and versatile stage players. Actor/director Reinhold Schünzel hired Renate for her first movie and used her again many times in some of her (and his) best films. As her American counterparts at the time were Claudette Colbert and Nancy Carroll, Renate too became a shining star of light, sexy comedies. Pert, stylish and wholesomely pretty, she had just enough of an edge to make her impish sexuality all the more interesting.