Two worlds

When the name Mariele Millowitsch appears in the closing credits of series like girl friends, Nikola, or Marie Brand, it should strictly speaking be preceded by the title “Dr. med. vet.” Before the Cologne native became a well-known television actor, she studied veterinary medicine at LMU.

“When I was little,” she recalls, “apparently I would stand in front of the hall mirror with a cloth on my head and say: I want to be an actor – and a vet.” The acting bit came naturally, as her father was a well-known local actor, Willi Millowitsch, who ran the family Millowitsch Theater in Cologne together with his sister. This is where Marie-Luise – “Mariele” – and her siblings were pretty much raised.

Dogs and a pig at the theater

Somehow there always seemed to be animals around. “My father and my Auntie Lucy always had pets – two Alsatians, for example, both of whom gave birth to twelve pups in quick succession.” And the play Three Cologne Lads even had a pig on the stage. “Although I don’t think the pig liked it all that much.” Auntie Lucy’s son Karl-Peter was a vet and zoo director in Caracas, so maybe that influenced Millowitsch’s choice of career as well.

After completing high school, her first wish was to go to acting school in Salzburg. “But when I was about to take the step, my instinct said no, even though I’d grown up on the stage. But I suppose it was precisely because of that reason.” She’d learned from older colleagues that the acting profession “really has two faces” – the artistic side and making a living. As well as self-expression and creativity, this means a lot of rejections, long gaps between jobs, and financial insecurity.

She was about to start a course in physiotherapy when her old career wish reared its head again – and Millowitsch began a course in veterinary medicine at LMU in the 1980s. “I packed my bags and went to Munich, or Schwabing to be precise, where animal medicine was still located in those days.” Within Schwabing, she moved from Ainmiller Street to Fallmerayer Street and then to Schelling Street. “But I could always go everywhere on foot or rode my little bike through the English Garden. It was a wonderful time.”

Dissecting goats in anatomy class

Her studies were demanding. “There were so many credits, and I really had to swot. In chemistry, which we’d scarcely done at school, I flunked the exam multiple times.” She had to sit a repeat exam with the human medicine students. “There were multiple-choice questions – and that’s not my thing at all, as I can’t talk my way out of trouble like I usually can.” Millowitsch has a particularly vivid memory of the large dissection room for animal medicine. “Once they had a whole row of goats laid out for us to dissect – some with really weird faces.”

After the dissection, we went for a meal. “We were sitting in this Italian place in Schwabing, a few colleagues and yours truly. And suddenly I think: My God, what’s that smell? But it was us! You couldn’t get the stink out of your hands – all that formalin and goat death.” The students at the ‘veterinary table’ also learned to speak quietly. “Otherwise, the people at neighboring tables would glare at us. Dissection and dead goats are not for everyone, especially when they’re trying to eat.”

Calves and cabaret

Near the end of her studies, the theater beckoned again. “During the state examination phase, I was in gynecology class doing an exercise on calving ropes,” recalls Millowitsch. In the middle of the exercise, her cellphone rang. ‘Hello, this is Kay Lorentz!’ And I thought, Kay? The one with the geese is Konrad, isn’t he? And he’s dead!” But it was Kay Lorentz, head of the Kom(m)ödchen cabaret in Düsseldorf, and he offered Millowitsch a part in his new ensemble.

She quickly decided to take up the offer. “My decision-making tends to be swift and instinctive – and mostly it works out.” She completed the state examination nonetheless. “It’s just in my nature to finish things properly. It would have been silly otherwise, don’t you think?”

For a year, she trod the boards of the acclaimed theater for political satire. “We were on tour a lot with the Kom(m)ödchen, and then I realized: Cabaret wasn’t really my thing – others were better at it.”

Breakthrough role as nurse

Somehow she was “no longer really satisfied” with her life and uncertain what path to take next. “And in the midst of this crisis, who got in touch only Professor Köstlin from Munich, who gave me a ticking-off: If you don’t write your doctoral thesis now, then I’m going to pass on it!” So Millowitsch decided – once again, quite spontaneously – to write her dissertation for LMU from Cologne. “On my old computer, you had to save the file after every second page – otherwise, it would all vanish. Oh, how I cursed!”

Her topic was: “Experimental and clinical investigations into percutaneous partial diskectomy for chondrodystrophic breeds” – a type of surgery carried out on certain dog breeds such as dachshunds. This suited Millowitsch well, as she herself had a “classic wire-haired dachshund” since her Munich days. “I got Sophie from a hunter who grumbled: ‘Stupid dog, totally gun-shy.’ Presumably they were shooting with Sophie right next to them, which shredded her nerves. Oh, the poor creature was so jumpy.” Teaching her to trust again required a lot of patience. This experience prompted Millowitsch to dedicate her doctoral thesis to the dog.

In 1991, Millowitsch submitted her dissertation and obtained her doctorate – and then returned to acting after all. “I started out by banging on the doors of film production companies – in Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, everywhere …” Her breakthrough came with the ZDF series girl friends. “To this day, I couldn’t be more grateful to the producer Katharina Trebitsch. I was already 39 years old – but then my career really got going.”

Chief inspector, attorney, parole officer

From the mid-1990s, she also played the nurse Nikola from the RTL sitcom of that name – a role that garnered her, among other accolades, the Adolf Grimme Prize and a German Television Award. Subsequently, Millowitsch took on further title roles in numerous TV series – from the family law attorney in Die Familienanwältin and the chief inspector Marie Brand on ZDF to the parole officer Klara Sonntag on ARD. She also had roles in international productions, such as the French series Julie Lescaut. In her movies and series, she often found herself standing in front of the camera with animals. However, she always turned down offers to play a vet. “That would have been too easy for me – and much too close.”

“I’ve been very, very lucky indeed in my life,” summarizes Millowitsch. As an actor, she is a defining face in the German TV landscape. In addition, she supports Doctors Without Borders, among other causes, and in 2017 the SPD party appointed her as delegate to the Federal Convention which elected German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. And although she has never practiced as a vet, because she definitively returned to acting after her doctorate: “I don’t regret a single day of my time in Munich – and would study veterinary medicine again at the drop of a hat. Truly, at the drop of a hat.”