German actress
She spoke fluently German, French, Italian, Russian and Polish.
She only appeared in few more movies in the 20s.
Orska married an important Jewish banker from Berlin in November 12/1920, much older than she was, Baron Hans von Bleichrder (son of Gerson von Bleichrder) and took a name of Baroness von Bleichrder. They were divorced in 1925.
Her photographs appeared on covers of magazines, postcards with her portraits were distributed all over that part of the continent.
The actress Maria Orska was developed by Ferdinand Gregori in St. Petersburg in 1910 and she made her stage debut in Germany at the Hoftheater Mannheim. It followed theater engagements in Hamburg from 1911 and finally in Berlin from 1915 by the legendary Max Reinhardt.
Some people speculate that an addiction to morphine had a decisive influence on the last years of her life.
Her youngest brother, Edwin Orska, aviator of the Russian Empire Air Force, survived the Bolshevik Revolution and lived in Berlin until 1937. He married in Ecuador South America in 1938. Died in Quito in 1966 at the age of 71.
Maria Orska had an enormous popularity in Central Europe of the 1920s. Her stage performances at the Hebbel-Theater in the Kreuzberg district were seen as extraordinary by the Berlin audience of that era.
She was sometimes credited in films and film publicity materials as Maria Daisy Orska.
Maria Orskas lover, a wealthy Jewish industrialist and geologist Julius Heinrich Koritschoner from Vienna, shot himself in Constantinople in 1928, writing before death a letter to Orska. His morphine addiction is thought to have made him suicidal.
Maria Orskas sister Gabryela Marchesa di Serra Mantschedda, married to an Italian aristocrat, committed suicide in 1926 by hanging herself on a curtain rope in a Berlin hotel, after a heated argument with Maria.
She began her film career in the Middle of the 10s and worked till 1917 almost exclusively for the director Max Mack.
Maria Orska committed suicide in 1930 at the age of 37 with an overdose of Veronal. This barbiturate was well-known among artists till to the 60s as an addictive but also suicide drug.
Oskar Kokoschka drew in 1922, a famous portrait of her, now kept as a lithograph in collections of several museums.
She was famous for her parts in theater plays by Strindberg, Wedekind and Pirandello.
