Inge Meysel (May 30, 1910 - July 10, 2004) was a German actress. From the early 1960s until her death, Meysel was one of Germany's most popular actresses. She had a successful stage career and played more than 100 roles in film and on television.
Born Ingeborg Hansen as the daughter of a Danish mother and a German Jew, she attended drama schools in Berlin from 1928 until 1930, thereafter she was on stage in Zwickau, Leipzig and Berlin.
During Nazi Germany Inge Meysel was banned from performing from 1935 until 1945 because of her Jewish father. In 1945 she restarted her career in Hamburg.
Since the early 1960s Inge Meysel mainly acted in made-for-TV films and got the nickname (Fernseh-) Mutter der Nation ("(Television) Mother of the Nation").
She won numerous German actor awards including a lifetime achievement award from the German Television Awards, but in 1981 she refused to accept the Bundesverdienstkreuz because "Einen Orden dafür, daß man anständig gelebt hat, brauche ich nicht" ("I don't need an order of merit just for having lived decently").
From the mid-1920s until shortly before her death, Meysel was outspoken on many - often controversial - social and political issues. Despite her decidedly leftist and feminist views, this did not harm her popularity as an actress.
In 2004, aged 94, she died of heart failure at her home near Hamburg. She was cremated and her ashes were buried at Ohlsdorf Cemetery, Hamburg.
