Gerda Zinn

Gerda Ursula Zinn (September 14, 1913 - February 26, 2012) Critic Alfred Kantorowicz praised Zinn's impressionism, stating that she “gave an example of the economy with which the means are supposed to be able to handle complicated roles in these pieces.”

Beginning in the 1930s, Gerda Zinn acted in film productions working with Hertha Thiele, Thea von Harbou, Johannes Riemann, and Wolfgang Staudte. Gerda also worked as a radio play and voice actor, including for the role "Miriam" in Cecil B. DeMille's production of Samson and Delilah.

In the early 1940s while working as a theater and film actress in Hamburg and Berlin, and after many of her Jewish and gay friends of the theater had already fled Germany or had vanished, her fellow-actor husband was drafted into the German Army. Zinn had stated of the time that “even the actors and actresses had to go into the re-armament business.”. She then decided to move to her suburban home in Dresden, which was later bombed into rubble during the 1945 Bombing of Dresden, trapping her and her mother underneath in her cellar for three days before being dug out and leaving Zinn with a head tremor. After a successful third attempt at escape from the occupying Soviet forces in the city, which she made by invoking her considerable personal charm along with a bribe of a bottle of vodka, Zinn subsequently found work with the Allied-occupying forces in West Berlin in the theater, film, and radio.

In 1952 after reading Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda which was recommended to her by a bookstore clerk, she was put in touch with Franz Dispeker, a German-Jewish banker who had managed to evade the Nazis during the war and had later translated into German Swami Prabhavananda's book "The Eternal Companion". The following year at Dispeker's home in Switzerland, Zinn met Swami Prabhavananda who initiated her as a devotee, bestowing her with the Sanskrit name of Ambika. She soon gave up acting with the intention to emigrate to the U.S. to pursue her new spiritual path of Vedanta. Virtually broke after the war, she arrived in New York City in 1955 possessing only $100. 1937: Once I Like You (Einmal werd’ ich Dir gefallen) 1950: The Stairs (Die Treppe)

Theater 1941: Nikolaus Asztalos: Die Nacht von Siebenbürgen (Widwe) – Director: Rudolf Alexander Schröder (Sächsische Staatstheater Dresden – Schauspielhaus) 1948: Konstantin Trenjow: Lyubov Jaworaja or Die Entscheidung (Secretary Panowa) – Director: Hans Rodenberg (House of the Culture of the Soviet Union) 1949: James Gow: Tiefe Wurzeln (Sue Ane Langdon) – director: Steffie Spira (Volksbühne, Berlin)

Radio Plays 1949: Derstiefelte Kater (as Princess): Director: Robert A. Stemmle, with Aribert Wäscher, Kurt Waitzmann, NWDR. 1950: Drei Menschen: Director: Alice Decarli, with Alfred Balthoff, Renée Stobrawa, RIAS. 1950: Robert and his Brothers: Director: Hanns Korngiebel, with Alice Decarli, Paul Edwin Roth, RIAS. 1952: Elga: after Gerhart Hauptmann, directed by Hanns Korngiebel, with Antje Weisgerber, Walter Franck, RIAS.