10 Facts About Sybille Schmitz

Sybille Maria Christina Schmitz was a German actress.

Sybille Schmitz established herself as a prominent actress in the German cinema with the films which followed including Der Herr der Welt, Abschiedswalzer, Ein idealer Gatte, and Fahrmann Maria.

Sybille Schmitz had roles in Die Umwege des schonen Karl, Dance on the Volcano, Die Frau ohne Vergangenheit, Trenck, der Pandur and Titanic.

Sybille Schmitz's career remained strong even though she was never officially endorsed by the Reichsfilmkammer and had a strenuous relationship with Joseph Goebbels.

Sybille Schmitz appeared in supporting roles in such movies as Zwischen gestern und morgen, Sensation in Savoy, and Illusion in a Minor Key, but was beset with alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, several suicide attempts and the committal to a psychiatric clinic.

Coincidentally, the last film she made less than two years before taking her own life had Sybille Schmitz's character committing suicide as a last act of desperation.

On 13 April 1955, Sybille Schmitz died by suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills; she was 45 years old.

At the time of her death, she had been living in Munich with a woman named Ursula Moritz, a physician who allegedly sold her morphine at an inflated rate and kept Sybille Schmitz doped up while squandering the little funds she had available to her.

Sybille Schmitz's family claimed that once the actress proved to be of no more use to Moritz, the physician facilitated her suicide.

In 2000, she was the topic of a documentary titled Tanz mit dem Tod: Der Ufa-Star Sybille Schmitz, written and directed by Achim Podak.