In less than a decade, German actress Devrim Lingnau has built her acting career on one television role after another. One of her earliest roles saw her as part of the regular cast of an adventure and mystery show for young adults. But her turn as the famous empress, Sisi of Austria, has won acclaim and attention.
This month, get to know Devrim Lingnau and learn German with films!
Get to Know Devrim Lingnau
Devrim Lingnau was born in 1998 in Mannheim, Germany. As the daughter of a Turkish father and a German mother, Lingnau grew up speaking both German and Turkish.
She studied ballet as a child and attended Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim, a university for music and the performing arts. Later, she studied art at the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe and received her Abitur in Mannheim.
Lingnau’s earliest acting roles came in her teens on television. Her first role was on an episode of Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst, a show recounting unsolved crimes.
Fluch des Falken
For four seasons the children and young adult mystery series Fluch des Falken ran on German television. In seasons three and four of Fluch des Falken, from 2014 to 2015, Lingnau portrays Yasemin. She is one of six students stranded in a mysterious location on the way home from a class trip. In season three, the group is invited to a castle for an event seeking to cast talented young adults.
Auerhaus
Based on the best-selling novel Auerhaus by Bov Bjerg, the 2019 film of the same name is directed by Neele Leane Vollmar. In the film, Frieder, the teenage son of a farmer, attempts to take his life just before his Abitur. Fortunately, he is saved.
Three friends and fellow students — Höppner, his girlfriend Vera, and Cäcilia (portrayed by Lingnau) — rally around Frieder. The group decides to live by their own rules and not what society deems acceptable. They move into a home together. But as they try to lift up and support their friend, they feel the judgment of the outside world.
Die Kaiserin
Die Kaiserin, or The Empress, is the award-winning German-language Netflix streaming series focused on Elisabeth the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. But she is better known as Sisi.
The series follows Elisabeth von Wittelsbach, a somewhat eccentric and non-traditional teenager portrayed by Devrim Lingnau, who has been chosen to marry Emperor Franz Joseph I, portrayed by Philip Froissant.
Sisi is thrust, unprepared, into a world in Vienna unlike any she has ever known from her childhood in Bavaria. Vienna is full of politics, class conflict, and intrigue. Franz, meanwhile, is struggling as emperor. It simply does not come naturally to him. He envisions the job one way while his mother, Archduchess Sophie, sees something else.
Practice practice practice! Discover other great German language actors and actresses previously featured.
Top photo by Elena Zaucke courtesy of Spielkind. This post contains affiliate links.