Elfie Fiegert is a German actress of Afro-German heritage, renowned for her roles in post-war West German cinema as a child. She is best known for starring in the 1952 film Toxi and for her leading role in Der dunkle Stern (1955), both of which addressed the experiences of mixed-race children in Germany.
Born in 1946 to a white German mother and an African American father who served with the U.S. military, Fiegert spent her early years in an orphanage before being adopted in 1948 by a white German couple from Bavaria. At just five years old, she was chosen for the title role in Toxi, directed by Robert A. Stemmle, in which she was promoted as essentially portraying her own life story as an Afro-German child placed in care.
The film’s popularity resulted in “Toxi” becoming a common term in 1950s German media to describe Afro-Germans and their social realities. Fiegert continued to appear in films throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, including Sterne über Colombo (1953) and Unsere tollen Tanten in der Südsee (1964).
That same year, she married a Nigerian student, Christopher Ikpeamana Nwako, in Munich, which led to a break from acting. After their divorce, she returned to the screen, taking roles in several films and television projects, such as the documentary Color Me German. By 1986, it was reported she had remarried and had been living in Mallorca for some years, though little further is publicly known about her later life. Originally posted HERE.
