The scandal film “The Girl Rosemarie” made Nadja Tiller the sex symbol of her time in 1958. A role that brings her world fame, but which she can never completely shake off. Most recently, she lives in a senior citizens’ residence in Hamburg. The Austrian dies there at the age of 93.
When Nadja Tiller exposed the double standards of the economic miracle on the screen as the noble prostitute Rosemarie Nitribitt, it was a scandal in 1958 – for the actress it became her most important role. “The girl Rosemarie” attracted millions of viewers to the cinemas and remained closely linked to the film diva forever. Only her husband’s name could keep up: Walter Giller and Nadja Tiller were once a dream couple in film. At the age of 93, the Austrian actress died that night in Hamburg, more than eleven years after her husband.
Giller and Tiller remained inseparable until the comedian’s death in December 2011, even though they lived in separate apartments in a luxurious senior citizens’ residence on the banks of the Elbe in Hamburg – but of course they were next to each other. The Viennese native met her great love while filming the “Schlagerparade”. Both became a couple privately – and for numerous productions also in the film, for example in “Gripsholm Castle”.
But Tiller had her big appearance as Rosemarie Nitribitt alone. Platinum blonde and high heels, sophisticated and wicked, vamp and seductress – that’s how she portrayed the noble Frankfurt prostitute who had been murdered a year earlier. “Nadja Tiller, the best that was available in Germany at the time in the vamp and sex sector, rightly plays with her slender legs, her mockingly full lips, but otherwise, in the middle of the fifties, is hardly allowed to get started. She is cold, even synthetic,” wrote the “Spiegel” decades later.
It was the role of the luxury call girl that gave her her big break. Director Rolf Thiele was not interested in the life story of Nitribitt – his socially critical drama delivered a satire on the economic miracle and double standards. The film drew audiences in droves, screened at the Venice Film Festival and won a Golden Globe in the US. For Tiller, “Rosemarie” became the role of her life – as an adored film diva, she gave a face to the dream of great glamor.
With that she played her way onto the wish lists of European directors. The famous role of Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain in “La Dolce Vita” or films with Marcello Mastroianni or Alain Delon – the offers were there. But Tiller refused. “Unfortunately I wasn’t smart enough and too stupid and then didn’t accept three very famous films,” said Tiller shortly before her 90th birthday. “And in the end I would probably be sitting here the same way today – even if I had done one of them,” said the Viennese native.
Before she wowed in the cinema as a cool beauty and seductive creature of luxury, the theater was her home. Mother Erika Körner was an operetta singer, father Anton Tiller a court actor – the path to the stage was obvious. She received her first engagement in 1949 at the Vienna Theater in der Josefstadt. Her two-time freestyle for “Miss Austria” at that time was little conducive to her career at the staid house. The young beauty earned an extra income as a demonstration lady in the “Hutsalon Susi”.
At the same time, she tinkered with her film career and was not discouraged by a false start: her small part in the Beethoven biography “Eroika” from 1949 was cut out again because the work was too long. Entertainment films like “The Dream of Happiness” alongside O.W. Fischer, however, gave her film experience, and more demanding roles soon followed. In the romantic comedy “Sie” she convincingly found the role of the femme fatale and met the later director of “Rosemarie”. For Thiele she was also beautiful and unscrupulous in “The Barrings” – she herself found the film more important for her career than “Rosemarie”.
Tiller inspired in films like “Labyrinth of Passions”, “The Buddenbrooks” and “Lulu”. The swarmed shot with Jean Gabin (“In the cloak of the night” she called her favorite film in 2019), Curd Jürgens, Yul Brynner, Mario Adorf, Jean-Paul Belmondo. Filmmakers cast the actress with the slightly smoky voice as an erotic lady with that certain something. With a cheeky look, she showed a lot of leg and cleavage for that time. Something that annoyed her as well. “I had to wear jewelry and behave like no vamp, except in German films,” she once complained.
Later, when there were no great cinema offers, she reluctantly switched to television at the end of the 1960s and became a guest in many series. In the end, she was seen in more than 120 films and series. The Hamburger-by-choice was particularly proud of an appearance in the musical “Applause” at the Lübeck Theater – because she didn’t think she could sing that well. “I really mobilized all the strength I had and I was very proud that I had done it,” she said in 2019. Til Schweiger hired Tiller for “Barfuss” for Leander Haussmann’s “Dinosaur – Against us you look old out of!” Tiller and Giller stood in front of the camera for the last time.
The couple was married for 55 years. She had kept his apartment next door to hers for guests. However, that was not the end of her career. In 2013, together with a roommate from her retirement home, the Swiss actor Fritz Lichtenhahn, she won the German Radio Play Prize for “Traumrolle”. Her last appearance on the theater stage was a small role in “My Fair Lady” in Braunschweig in 2015, which she “greatly enjoyed”. “It was actually a nice finish,” she said. Despite surviving several illnesses – cancer, stroke, sudden hearing loss and artificial knees and hips – Tiller remained content and balanced. “I am very grateful for everything that happened to me.”
(This article was first published on Tuesday, February 21, 2023.)
