Lotte Tobisch

The Grand Dame of the Vienna Burgtheater was born Charlotte Tobisch-Labotýn. Her father was the prominent architect Karl Tobisch-Labotýn. As president of the School Council of Bohemia-Moravia, her grandfather had been elevated to the Austrian aristocracy by Emperor Franz Josef in 1912. Near the end of World War II, her family relocated to Bavaria but Lotte remained in Vienna where she spent the final years of her education at the Sacre Coeur and at the Horak Konservatorium, Viennas oldest private school for music and the arts (now known as the Franz Schubert Konservatorium). She then studied drama under Raoul Aslan (who became her mentor) and an early stage debut at the Burgtheater duly followed in 1945. During the final weeks before the end of the war and the subsequent occupation of Vienna by Russian troops, Tobisch was conscripted to work in a factory stamping tin cans. After the war, she worked as a free-lance actress for fifteen years before joining the Burgtheater ensemble. In 1962, she became a member of this prestigious organisation's artistic works council. In addition to diverse roles on the stage, Lotte Tobisch made occasional appearances in films and on TV. Among her best known early screen roles were those of Eva Braun in Georg Wilhelm Pabst's The Last Ten Days (1955) and of Donna Elvira in Don Juan (1955). She was also the author of several books and literary articles. Between 1980 and 1996, Tobisch served as organiser of the famous Viennese Opera Ball. She was actively involved in liberal politics and in several charitable institutions, serving as honorary president of the Austrian Alzheimer's Society and as patroness of an organisation providing cultural support for the elderly and infirm at retirement and nursing homes. In 1988, she was decorated for services to the Republic of Austria. In 2016, Tobisch received a Special Lifetime Icon Award at the Vienna Fashion & Lifestyle Awards. Upon her death in October 2019 at the age of 93 she was eulogised as an 'ambassador of Austrian culture'.