MARLENE DIETRICH, who died 30 years ago, on May 6 1992, must be remembered not only for her importance as role model for emancipation, but also for her outspoken and active stand against her Nazi homeland.

Born in Berlin on December 27 1901, she became one of the most famous actors of all time. 

Her breakthrough came with the 1929 film The Blue Angel. She left Germany for Hollywood in 1930. 

When the Nazis were stripping other artists’ German citizenship, she renounced hers. Throughout the second world war, Dietrich actively engaged in the anti-fascist struggle. 

When she visited Germany after the war, she was deemed a traitor in West Germany, with relatively small numbers attending her funeral as late as 1992.

Dietrich’s father, Louis Otto Dietrich, an officer, died when Dietrich and her sister were very young. A few years later, Dietrich’s mother married Eduard von Losch, who was killed in World War I.  

Marlene intended to become a concert violinist but a wrist injury made this impossible. After that, she turned her interest to the stage. 

She auditioned unsuccessfully at Berlin’s famous Max Reinhardt Drama School. However, all this changed when she was discovered by Josef von Sternberg for his new film project.

The Blue Angel was shot largely in 1929 and premiered in 1930. Germany was badly affected by the Wall Street crash and US loans suddenly dried up. Germany crashed badly, and its severe economic crisis was a fertile ground for the rise of German fascism.

The Blue Angel is a tragedy, with the pompous, but by no means malevolent teacher professor Rath as its tragic hero, whose destruction arouses pity and fear as the audience realise that such fate could befall them too. 

As in Shakespeare, the destruction is provoked by the times, by an inability to cope with these times. 

Rath represents the older generation, taunted by his students. He is, however, coldly destroyed by the young cabaret dancer Lola. His dignity is destroyed and this causes his descent into madness. 

The ultimate blow comes when the company returns to his hometown and past colleagues witness the extent of his destruction, and, as the company director insists on a final humiliation, madness and death. 

The Blue Angel foreshadows aspects of Nazi Germany, a ruthlessness that will not shrink from destroying people, and that was set to rise to power meteorically. The Blue Angel was banned in Germany in 1933. 

Both Sternberg and Dietrich left Germany for Hollywood in 1930. In the 1930s and 1940s, Dietrich starred in many famous films and was among the first to embody the emancipated woman onscreen, with her characteristic trouser suits, hats and challenge to other “male” domains. 

She had relationships with both men and women and is celebrated to this day by the LGBT community.

When Nazi Germany revoked the citizenships of many German artists, Dietrich renounced hers. Dietrich, with Billy Wilder and others, set up a fund to help persecuted people flee Germany. In 1937, she donated her entire income from Knight Without Armour to helping the refugees.

After Pearl Harbour was attacked on December 7 1941, Dietrich helped sell war bonds. In 1942, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) approached Dietrich to assist in their propaganda efforts. 

She recorded US songs in German, but also German songs for use at the front. Dietrich was also among those who volunteered in 1944 and 1945 and sang to the troops, often under dangerous conditions close to the front line.

After the war, in 1948, she returned to acting, taking on the part — most reluctantly — of a Nazi singer in Billy Wilder’s comedy, A Foreign Affair, set on location in the ruins of Berlin. 

In 1962, she narrated the US documentary The Black Fox, which links the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler to Goethe’s story of Reynard the Fox. 

She also toured the world giving concerts, and included in her repertoire new anti-war songs such as Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind and Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone? 

In 1975, Dietrich retired from public life. When Dietrich died at the age of 90, her funeral service in Paris was attended by approximately 1,500 mourners in the church itself with thousands more outside. 

Three medals were displayed at the foot of the coffin recognising Dietrich’s fight against Nazism. 

Dietrich had requested to be buried in her birthplace Berlin, so her body was flown there on May 16 1992. 

However, there was little public acknowledgement of this event and comparatively few people attended the burial. 

On her last visit to (West) Berlin in 1960, she had been threatened and harassed, and the police had feared disruptions of the funeral by neonazi groups.

A wave of hate mail and insults such as “traitor” to a (West) Berlin newspaper and the Senate had caused the Senate to cancel the planned transfer in a Bundeswehr jet and a memorial service in the Deutsches Theater in her honour. 

Eight months later Dietrich was awarded an honorary grave, which was desecrated a year later. On her 100th birthday, December 27 2001, the city finally apologised for the hostility she had faced there after the war. 

Not a word about the controversies over naming a street after her, nothing about the cancellation of the official commemoration. 

On May 16 2002, Marlene Dietrich was posthumously made an honorary citizen of Berlin.