Dorothea Wieck was born Dora Bertha Olavia Wieck and grew up in southern Germany and Sweden. She was descended from musician Clara Schumann.^[1]

By the time Wieck was six years old, her father (an artist) and her mother (a musician) felt that she should be an actress. She imitated people who visited their home, and she wrote short plays for her friends and herself. She attended an academy that trained her in music, dancing, and art, but not in acting. When she was 15 years old, she began studying under Max Reinhardt and went to the Josephstaedter Theatre in Vienna, where she began to act.^[2]

Wieck launched her acting career on stage in 1924 and made her screen debut in German films in 1926,^[1] appearing in several silent films. She became widely known through her leading role in the 1931 film Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform). Her American film debut came in Cradle Song (1933).^[3]

Wieck appeared in around 50 films and played on the stages of many large theatres, notably at the Deutsches Theater and the Schillertheater, Berlin. She also worked as a theatre director. After World War II, she appeared in films only in supporting roles, and she withdrew from films almost entirely in the early 1960s. In 1973, Wieck received the Film Ribbon in Gold of the Deutscher Filmpreis for long and outstanding achievements in German film.^{[citation needed]}

Wieck was married to Baron Ernest von der Decken, "a man of reputed influence in the Nazi regime".^[4] During World War II, German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels gave a reception at which Wieck was the guest of honor.^[4]

DNB, the German official news agency, erroneously reported in March 1945 that Wieck had been killed in an air attack on Dresden by Allied forces.^[5]

She actually died on 20 February 1986 in Berlin, West Germany, aged 78. She is buried at the cemetery Friedhof Heerstraße in Berlin.

• Dorothea Wieck at IMDb
• Dorothea Wieck at AllMovie
• Dorothea Wieck at steffi-line.de (in German)
• Profile at Cyranos (in German)
• Images, filmography and bibliography at Virtual Film History
• Biography at FemBio (in German)