Erni Mangold

Erni Mangold (born Erna Goldmann, 1927-01-26 to 2026-09-05) was an Austrian actress, stage director and teacher whose career ran more than seventy years across Josefstadt, Gruendgens-era Hamburg, German and Austrian film and television, and a late flowering that brought her the Austrian Film Prize and a Platin-Romy. International audiences know her best as the palm reader who stops Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995). At home she was a Kammerschauspielerin, Nestroy winner, Diagonale laureate and a public voice against racism and for unvarnished talk about power, sexism and age.

She was born in her grandparents' inn in Grossweikersdorf, Lower Austria, into an artistic household: father Heinrich Goldmann, a teacher and passionate painter; mother a gifted pianist who set aside a concert career for family and gave Erni piano lessons from ages four to fourteen. The family moved to Vienna in 1938. At fifteen she entered Schauspielschule Krauss while still at Gymnasium. Wartime disrupted early chances: a small Salzburger Festspiele part in Nestroy's Lumpacivagabundus (1944) was cancelled; she began philosophy at the University of Vienna after the war but soon left for the stage. ORF reporting also notes wartime forced labour as a young woman in Vienna, which later fed her lifelong resistance to right-wing politics.

From 1946 to 1956 she was engaged at Theater in der Josefstadt, taking the stage name Erni Mangold. Postwar typecasting as the glamorous Sexerl and wife-wrecker made her restless and exposed her to persistent harassment she later documented in Lassen Sie mich in Ruhe. In 1955 Gustaf Gruendgens brought her to the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg; she stayed until 1963, then worked under Karl Heinz Stroux at the Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus. In Hamburg in 1958 she married actor Heinz Reincke; the marriage lasted until 1978. She later said she subordinated her career to his for years before reclaiming independence and returning to Vienna.

Film work began in 1948 with Das andere Leben and Karl Hartl's Der Engel mit der Posaune beside Attila Hoerbiger, Paula Wessely and Maria Schell. Mid-1950s highlights include O. W. Fischer's Hanussen and Rolf Thiele's Eva with Romy Schneider. Across roughly 140-150 screen credits she moved from Heimatfilm and boulevard into harder Austrian cinema (Kassbach, Der Bockerer), international co-productions (Before Sunrise; Nordwand / North Face; Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin), TV staples (Tatort, Kommissar Rex, Kottan ermittelt, Der Alte) and late leads such as Houchang Allahyari's Der letzte Tanz (2014), for which she won the Diagonale acting prize and the 2015 Austrian Film Prize for best actress. She remained on camera into 2020 (Schoenes Schlamassel).

Teaching was a second pillar: Salzburg Mozarteum from 1972; Krauss school and Max Reinhardt Seminar; from 1974 to 1995 at what became the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, from 1984 as full professor. In December 2017, at ninety, she left the stage as Maude in Harold and Maude at the Wiener Kammerspiele, saying she had die Nase voll of endless rehearsals. Film, interviews and activism continued. From the early 1990s her emotional centre was an 18th-century house in St. Leonhard am Hornerwald; for her 80th birthday the municipality named the dead-end lane Prof.-Erni-Mangold-Weg, which she called her finest honour because street names usually come posthumously.

She had no children. Awards include the Kainz Medal (1971), Kammerschauspielerin title (2000), Nestroy Theatre Prize for best supporting role (2005), Goldenes Ehrenzeichen of Vienna (2006), Great Golden Decoration of Lower Austria (2009), Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Art (2012), Nestroy Ring of Bad Ischl (2015), Grosser Diagonale-Schauspielpreis (2016), Goldener Rathausmann (2017) and Platin-Romy for lifetime achievement (2022).

Her agent Klaus Kelterborn told ORF that she fell asleep overnight in a Vienna retirement home. She died on 2026-09-05, aged 99. No clinical cause of death was made public.