“Without a doubt: Henny Porten was the star of the German silent film, a mega-star of unparalleled popularity. ‘Here’s a figure who is equally well-known and loved among members of all parties, young and old, of all social classes and strata’, Kurt Pinthus extolled in 1921, ‘who is more popular with people in Germany than Old Fritz or the Olympian Goethe ever were or could ever be’. And accordingly he demanded, ‘half seriously, half ironically’, ‘Henny Porten for President of the Reich! How this choice would shine over all the nations of this earth as a symbol of the Germans’ peaceableness’.
Henny Porten’s posthumous reputation is diametrically opposed to her popularity during her lifetime. What once made Porten, with her enormous potential for identification and integration, a great star, although it later made her suspect, was the adjective ‘German’ with which she was repeatedly characterised, and which is as vague as it is succinct.
As the first notable ‘German’ film star, Henny Porten stood for the actual rise of cinema in Germany, for a pleasure obstinately wrested from a high culture that inclined more towards literature and learning. A concrete screen image became overlaid with other aspects of affection – ‘I ran with my little sister to wherever our beloved Henny was showing. We laughed ourselves silly at her’. (Haas, 1960). The writer Béla Balázs found her fans’ continued sympathy in the 1920s a little behind the times, but states, not without admiration, that ‘the heroines of this first heroic era of the new art became legends in the people’s imagination. Asta Nielsen, Pola Negri, Henny Porten, Mia May, became symbols of youth and romantic love’. (Der Tag, 18.11.1924). (Corinna Müller, in Hans-Michael Bock (Hg.), Cinegraph. Lexikon des deutschsprachig en Films, 1984)