Elfie Fiegert

Elfie (Elfriede) Fiegert (born April 1946) is an Afro-German film actor who became famous as a child actor for playing the lead role in the film Toxi (1952) filmed when she was five years old. This was followed in 1955 with the film The Dark Star which has erroneously been described as sequel.[1]: 124–5  At the age of seventeen she had a small role in The House in Montevideo (1963).

Toxi

Elfie did not receive a credit for a role in Toxi.[2] She was described as playing herself. The publicity for the film suggested that the story of the film reflected Elfie's own origins, and she came to use the stage name Toxi.[1]

The name Toxi also became widely used as shorthand in the German media when referring to Afro-Germans and their social condition.[1]: 130 

Later career

Reflecting upon Elfie's career as an example of racial stereotyping, Heide Fehrenbach suggests that whilst as a child actor, Elfie was typecast as a black child of the US occupation of Germany post 1945; the onset of puberty meant that she became exoticised, sexualised and geographically removed from Germany.[1]: 127 

In 1964, she married the Nigerian student Christopher Nwako in Munich, in 1965 they had a son - Okwudili John Nwako. After they divorced, she resumed her acting career. She also appeared in documentaries on CBS and NBC. In 1986, it was reported she had remarried, living in Mallorca for the past 9 years and visiting Germany infrequently. [3]

Filmography[3]

References
  1. Fehrenbach, Heide (2005). Race after Hitler black occupation children in postwar Germany and America (2. print., 1. pbk. print. ed.). Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. ISBN 0691119066.
  2. "More Than A Few Words About Post-War German Cinema, Race and 'Toxi' | IndieWire". www.indiewire.com. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  3. "Fiegert, Elfriede (Elfie) | DEFA Film Library". ecommerce.umass.edu. Retrieved 2022-07-02.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.