Hanna Schygulla

Hanna Schygulla
Hanna Schygulla in 2013
Born	(1943-12-25) 25 December 1943 (age 73) Königshütte, Silesia (now Chorzów, Poland)
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1968–present

Hanna Schygulla (born 25 December 1943) is a German actress and chanson singer. Long associated with the theater and film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, for whom she first worked in 1965, she is generally considered the most prominent German actress of the New German Cinema. She won the 1979 Berlin Silver Bear for Best Actress for Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, and the 1983 Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for the Marco Ferreri film, The Story of Piera.

Schygulla was born in Königshütte (present day Chorzów in Poland) to German parents Antonie (née Mzyk) and Joseph Schygulla. Both the names Schygulla (also spelled Szyguła) and Mzyk are of Polish/Silesian origin, indicating a mixed heritage as was very common in Silesia. Her father, a timber merchant by profession, was then drafted as an infantryman in the German Army and was captured by American forces in Italy, subsequently being held as a prisoner of war until 1948. In 1945 Schygulla and her mother arrived as refugees in Munich following the expulsion of the majority German-speaking population of Königshütte by Communist Poland. Much later, in the 1960s, Schygulla studied Romance languages and German studies, while taking acting lessons in Munich during her spare time.