Doris Schade

One of (West) Germany's first steadily working TV actors, Doris Schade got her start in the theater like most of her peers. She studied her craft in the old-world city of Leipzig and soon after graduating began appearing regularly in stage productions, concentrating largely on that medium throughout her long career. Dedicated TV actors were rare in the early days of the small screen (particularly in Europe), and consequently Schade was drafted to appear in several productions. The first of these were stagy offerings like 1957's "Korruption," but improved in quality over the years. The pace of her TV work quickened in the 1960s and 1970s, and she became a near-ubiquitous presence on German TV screens. Still spending most of her working time in the theater, she finally started appearing in films in the 1980s. She played Josefa in renegade director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's art-house favorite "Veronika Voss" (1982), and played Clara Zetkin in 1986's "Rosa Luxemburg," the historical biopic of the fiery left-wing activist of the title. Not particularly slowed down by age, Schade kept up her busy pace in the 1990s and 2000s, playing in classic German TV serials such as crime procedural "Tatort," and "SOKO Leipzig," a mystery series set in the city where she studied.