Wanda Treumann

Wanda Treumann (1889 – 1926) belonged to the most popular stars of the German cinema before the first World War. Together with Viggo Larsen she also produced many films in the 1910's, in which she often played the female lead.


German postcard by NPG, no. 544. Photo A. Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Wolff, Berlin, no. F 7. Photo: Alex Binder.


German postcard by NPG, no. 259. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 210. Photo: A. Binder, Berlin.

Fully Independent
Wanda Treumann was born in Koclo (Koclin), Oberschlesien (Upper Silesia), Germany (now Koclin, Slaskie, Poland) in 1889 (some sources say 1888). Nothing is known about her youth, but afterwards she moved from Leipzig to Berlin with her husband Karl Treumann. In Berlin she took theater lessons with Emanuel Reicher. She debuted on stage at the Trianon Theater in 1910 and performed as stage actress on various Berlin stages, such as das Neue Theater and the Königgrätzer Theater. When performing at the Berliner Lustspielhaus, Wanda Treumann was discovered by the Danish actor and film pioneer Viggo Larsen. He introduced her to the cinema, where she would be his partner for years. From 1910 on, Treumann and Larsen performed together in films by the Vitascope-Gesellschaft such as the successful Sensation film Der Eid des Stephan Huller/The oath of Stephan Huller (1912, Viggo Larsen). Many of these films were produced by Jules Greenbaum, scripted by Max Mack, and directed by either Walter Schmidthassler or Larsen himself. In 1912, together with Larsen and her husband, she founded her own production company Treumann-Larsen Film GmbH in Berlin. Officially, Wanda Treumann’s husband was indicated as owner of the firm. As she said herself in Lichtbild-Theater, no. 41, 1912: "Then we – my master and partner in film, Mr. Oberregisseur Viggo Larsen and me – became fully independent. And so we are now: for the production of our new 'Treumann-Larsen-series', we develop the negatives ourselves which we shoot in our own film studio with our own cast and crew."


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 1523. Photo: Gerlach & Co., Berlin.


German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 87/1. Photo: Karl Schenker / Messter Film, Berlin.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 87/4. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin/Messter Film.


German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 153/5. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.

Treumann-Larsen Film GmbH
From 1912 on, Wanda Treumann produced more than 20 films.Directors at Treumann-Larsen Film were a.o. Rosa Porten and Franz Eckstein. Distribution was taken care of by the Deutsche Kinematographen-Gesellschaft in Cologne. Examples of their films are Die Sumpfblume/The marsh flower (1913, Viggo Larsen), Der Zirkusteufel/The Circus Devil (1913, Viggo Larsen), and Die Ahnfrau/The ancestress (1914, Viggo Larsen). After the outbreak of the First World War, production at Treumann-Larsen seems to have stopped. Larsen and Treumann performed in some films by the Messter Film company. From 1917 on, production at Treumann-Larsen was reactivated, with productions such as Wanda’s Trick (1918) and the four-part series film Die Frau mit den 10 Masken/The woman with 10 masks (1921, Siegfried Dessauer) with Johannes Riemann. From the late 1910's on, Larsen solely focused on producing, leaving the male leads to such actors as Eugen Burg and Oscar Marion. When he left the company around 1921, Wanda Treumann continued on her own as producer and actress, keeping the name of the company. In 1921 she gave a guest performance as a witch in the Circus Busch in Hamburg. According to our sources, Die tugendhafte Tänzerin/The virtuous dancer (1922, Robert Misch) was the last film in which Treumann performed and which was produced by the Treumann-Larsen Film GmbH. All in all Wanda Treumann acted in over 80 films and (co-)produced some 24 films. About her death not much is known, but IMDb mentions 1926 as the year she passed away.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 85/2. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin/Messter-Film.


German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 85/3. Photo: Karl Schenker / Messter Film, Berlin.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 153/4. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 208. Photo: A. Binder, Berlin.

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Elfgiva@web.de (IMDb), Filmportal.de (German), Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.