Trivia

After World War II there went around different rumors about Olga Tschechowa. One said she was a spy for the KGB and even got the Lenin medal (in this case there was a case of mistaken identity with her aunt of the same name in Russia), an other one maintained that she was a double agent for Poland as well as Hitler and moreover that she was Hitler's mistress. Olga Tschechowa never denied her good contacts to the leading Nazis but she denies activities as an agent.

After the war she lived in the Soviet sector of Berlin, but eventually she managed to escape from her Soviet contacts.

Niece of Anton Chekhov.

Niece of Olga Knipper-Chekhova.

In the 70's she had a short comeback with the movies "Die Zwillinge vom Immenhof" (1973) and "Frühling auf Immenhof" (1974).

In the 40's followed well-known productions like "Menschen im Sturm" (1941) and "Der ewige Klang" (1943), after that her career draw to a close.

During World War II her acting career was less successful; her one film made in Hollywood was unpopular, largely because her accent was too strong.

During the year of the 1917 October Revolution, Chekhova divorced her husband but kept his name. She managed to get a travel passport from the Soviet government, possibly in exchange for her cooperation, which led to permission to leave Russia. She was accompanied by a Soviet agent on a train to Vienna, then she moved to Berlin in 1920.

She largely retired from acting in the 70s, after publishing a book of memoirs. Her correspondence with Russian actors Olga Knipper and Alla Tarasova was published posthumously.

Born Olga Knipper, she was the daughter of Konstantin Knipper, a railway engineer, and the niece and namesake of Olga Knipper (Anton Chekhov's wife), both Lutherans of ethnic German ancestry.

Her mother was artistic talented and her aunt was the famous actress Olga Knipper-Cechova, who was married with the writer Anton Cechov. Because of this family connection she was in contact with famous artists like Tolstoj, Glazunov and Saljapin.

Olga Tschechowa earned her living with wood-carving during the confusion of the war and the revolution. In the same time she got her first small parts in the Russian movies.

At the beginning she played not very successful in the German silent movies "Schloss Vogelöd" (1921), "Der Todesreigen" (1922) and "Nora" (1923). Only with "Tatjana" (1923) pricked up one's ears for the first time and with her performance in "Die Stadt der Versuchung" (1925) she managed the long hope for the breakthrough. With this part she became established as seductress and Grand Dame.

She grew up in a wealthy family which had very good contacts to the czar court.

She made a journey to Berlin in 1920 and decided short-range to stay there and to find her luck as an actress.

Olga Tschechowa studied sculpture at the St. Peterburg Academy of Arts, after that she attended an acting school and played her first roles at the Moscow artist theater.

In 1929 she directed a movie for the first time and realized "Der Narr seiner Liebe", in which her ex-husband Michael Cechov played the leading role. In spite of positive critics this was her only direction.

In the post-war years followed small parts in several movies and at the end of the 50's she retired from the film business.

Olga Tschechowa became a German citizen in 1930 and continued her career successfully in the sound film era.

In 1949, she moved to Munich, Bavaria, and launched a cosmetics company, Olga Tschechowa Kosmetik.

She got married with Michail Cechov in 1914, a nephew of her uncle. The marriage was divorces three years later, their mutual daughter Ada (1917-1966) became also a well-known actress who was killed in an air crash in Bremen.

She had contact with the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who referred to her in his diaries as "eine charmante Frau" ("a charming lady"). She is also rumored to have been a communist spy in a Soviet conspiracy. According to the book Killing Hitler (2006), by the British author Roger Moorhouse, she was pressured by Stalin and Beria to flirt with Adolf Hitler in order to gain and transfer information so that Hitler could be killed by secret Soviet agents. Also, the controversial Argentine theater book Hotel Berlin 1933 by Pablo Sodor shows a relationship between Chekhova and Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel.