Sabine Sinjen

Sabine Sinjen (18 August 1942 – 18 May 1995) was a prolific German film and television actress whose career spanned nearly four decades. Born in Itzehoe, a town in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, she began her acting career as a teenager and quickly rose to prominence in post-war German cinema. Sinjen appeared in more than 50 films between 1957 and 1994, establishing herself as one of the recognizable faces of West German film during the late 1950s and 1960s. Her early roles included performances in Precocious Youth (1957), Schmutziger Engel (1958), and the iconic Mädchen in Uniform (1958), where she played the character Ilse von Westhagen. Throughout the 1960s, she starred in a variety of films ranging from period dramas like A Glass of Water (1960) to international productions such as the French film Les Tontons flingueurs (1963). In addition to her film work, Sinjen was a frequent presence on German television, appearing in popular series like Tatort and Der Kommissar in the early 1970s. Beyond her artistic contributions, she is notably remembered for her social activism. On 6 June 1971, she appeared as one of 28 women under the banner We've had abortions! (Wir haben abgetrieben!) on the cover page of the West German magazine Stern. In that groundbreaking issue, 374 women publicly stated that they had had pregnancies terminated, which at that time was illegal under West German law, making it a pivotal moment in the country's reproductive rights movement. Sinjen was married to television director Peter Beauvais from 1963 until their divorce in 1984. She passed away on 18 May 1995 in Berlin at the age of 52, leaving behind a legacy that extended well beyond the silver screen into the realms of social advocacy and feminist history in Germany.