Joana Maria Gorvin Prize

Every five years, five male members from the Performing Arts Section award the prize, established in 1995 by Maximilian B. Bauer in memory of his wife, the actress Joana Maria Gorvin. The award is intended to honour a woman who has made an outstanding contribution to theatre in the German-speaking world.

The prize is endowed with 10,000 euros.

Joana Maria Gorvin (b. 1922 in Sibiu [Hermannstadt], Romania) began her training in 1938 at the Berlin State Theatre’s drama school under Gustaf Gründgens. After her first engagement in Potsdam in 1943, she was also accepted into the State Theatre ensemble, where she met the director Jürgen Fehling, with whom she shared an intense artistic and personal relationship until he died in 1968.

After 1945, she performed in Berlin, first at the Hebbel Theatre, then at the Schiller Theatre and the Schloßpark Theatre, under the direction of Fehling, O. E. Hasse, Fritz Kortner, and Karl-Heinz Stroux, in the most important plays of Western post-war drama. In the 1950s, Gorvin frequently performed in Vienna (she was granted Austrian citizenship in 1955), and in the 1960s with Gustaf Gründgens in Hamburg. She performed her last major role in the final chorus of Botho Strauß’s 1992 production at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin.

Joana Maria Gorvin married Maximilian B. Bauer in 1971. She was a member of the Akademie der Künste from 1979 until her death on 2 September 1993 in Klosterneuburg, Austria.

Andrea Breth

2020
Andrea Breth

2015
Kirsten Dene

2010
Jutta Lampe

2005
Anja Silja

2000
Anny Schlemm

1995
Pina Bausch