History of two photos. Marlene Dietrich falls to her knees before Konstantin Paustovsky

Museums are shut down, but you can peep into their holdings and learn exciting stories related to the exhibits in a collaborative article by mos.ru and Mosgortur Agency.

Today, we’re visiting Paustovsky Museum and view two photos related to the meeting of German and American actress Marlene Dietrich and Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky. They both wished to meet some day, but it happened thanks to one simple question a curious journalist asked at the right time.

From Goethe to Paustovsky: the actress's bookshelf

Marlene Dietrich was very fond of reading, with her favourite writers being true celestial beings for her. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the first in this pantheon. The actress said that in her youth she learned the principles and moral life guidelines from his books. In 1920, 19-year-old Maria Magdalena Dietrich, an aspiring violinist, left Berlin, her home city, to continue her music studies. She wasn’t thinking about acting yet, but she already had a short and snappy name Marlene, which she had invented as a child instead of the long and boring one her parents had given her. The move was both a serious test and a great delight for the girl, as she was heading for Weimar, the city where Goethe once lived and worked. At the time, she felt even a deeper spiritual kinship with her idol.

She was also a great fan of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. 'Only Rilke's poems moved me so deep indeed,' Dietrich said. They were contemporaries, but the actress had not made it to meet him, which she regretted for the rest of her life. She discovered Rilke's poems when she decided to give up the idea of becoming a professional musician. In the early 1920s, her ring finger tendon got inflamed due to excessive exertion, and she could no longer play. It prompted Marlene to go to her first audition for a theatre school. Naturally, the applicant Dietrich read Rilke's poems.

Marlene, being a famous actress already, met renowned writers of the 20th century, whose names are often mentioned side by side — Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque. She first met with Remarque in Venice in 1935, and this was the beginning of a long and complicated story of friendship and love. A conversation about Rilke made them fall for each other. When they first met, she enthusiastically recited poems of her favourite poet to win Remarque’s heart forever. He described their relationship in his novel 'Arc de Triomphe'.

The last writer who appealed to Dietrich so much that she placed him in her personal literary ranking along with Goethe, Rilke, Hemingway and Remarque, was Konstantin Paustovsky. For a long time, the actress wanted to meet him, but she managed to do it only in 1964. 'I met him too late,' Dietrich would say it with regret in her autobiography.

Meeting in the Central House of Writers

In 1964, Marlene Dietrich came to the Soviet Union with concerts as part of her world tour. At the airport, journalists with cameras surrounded the film star and flooded her with questions. 'What or who would you like to meet in the USSR?' one of the reporters asked. The answer to this simple question was unexpectedly sincere. Dietrich told them about her passion for Paustovsky and about his 'Telegram' story she once read translated into English. That short sad story about a young woman who moved to the city and forgot her mother who lived in the country struck Marlene.

'The story impressed me so much that I could not get it out of my mind, as well as the name of the writer, which I had never heard of before. I failed to find any other books by this amazing writer. When I arrived on tour in Russia, I asked about Paustovsky at the Moscow airport... He was in the hospital at the time. Later, I read both volumes of 'The Story of Life' and was completely fascinated,' the actress recalled in her autobiographical book 'Reflections'.

During a concert at the Central House of Writers, just before going on stage, Dietrich's learned from her interpreter that Paustovsky was among the audience. The actress was surprised and did not believe it, as she knew that the writer had been recovering from a heart attack. When the concert was over, Marlene Dietrich was asked not to leave the stage.

'Suddenly, Paustovsky came up the steps. I was so stunned to see him that, unable to speak a word in Russian, I found no other way to express my admiration for him than to kneel before him,' Dietrich wrote later.

Then a funny situation happened — the actress' dress was so tight that she could not stand up on her own, so Konstantin and his doctor helped her up. The actress asked Paustovsky and his wife Tatyana Arbuzova what was his reason to come to the concert, since he had been in such a poor condition after a heart attack. 'It will be the best cure for him,' Tatyana replied.

The writer's stepdaughter Galina Arbuzova said that Marlene Dietrich was Paustovsky's favourite actress, and he just could not miss her performance in Moscow. Doctors were against it, as they believed that Paustovsky had not yet fully recovered, but the writer stayed determined and attended the concert with his wife and his doctor Viktor Abramovich.

As a memento of their meeting, Marlene Dietrich gave the writer an autographed picture. In response, Konstantin gave her his collection of 'Lost Novels' with an inscription: 'Marlene Dietrich, if I ever write a story like 'Telegram', I will dedicate it to you'.