Behrens, Manja, born 12-04-1914 in Dresden, Germany 
the daughter of the lawyer and public trustee, Walther Behrens (1880–1951) and his wife the actress Maria, born Lichtenegg Behrens. Manja was studying in Prague but had to break off because of money troubles in her family. She worked as a dentist assistant till 1935 and followed from 1930 private acting lessons from Waldemar Staegemann 
and later from Erich Ponto 
.She now was an actress who made her debut in the Dresdner State Theater with the show “Und Pippa tänzt” 
and she was immediately a big success according to Gerhard Hauptmann 
, a German dramatist and novelist. He is counted among the most important promoters of literary naturalism. Hauptmann died old age 83 on 06-06-1946 in Agnetendorf. She became a high appreciated actress, but she came in troubles as she didn’t want to agree with Josef Goebbels’s advances.
After an unpleasant, private meeting with Goebbels, which she described as: I prefer to scrub the pavement before go into his advances, her career was over.
On some film festival in 1940 she met Martin Bormann 
and the both started an affair. She now was the mistress of the Nazi leader Martin Bormann and his fanatic Nazi wife Gerda Buch 
had no problems with that.
In 1938, Adolf Hitler institutes the Mother’s Cross, 
to encourage German women to have more children, to be awarded each year on August 12, Hitler’s mother’s birthday. Gerda who had the 1st Class Order, Gold Cross 
for mothers with eight or more children, wrote to Martin ‘See to it that one year she has a child and next year I have a child, so that you will always have a wife who is serviceable’. 
Because of her relationship to the infamous Martin Bormann (uncovered by the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper) she was forbidden to act in films for twenty years. She after the war was again ensemble member of the Dresdner Staatsschauspiel to 1953, the Volksbühne Berlin from 1954 to 1967, and the Maxim Gorky Theater from 1967 to 1991.
Death and burial ground of Behrens, Manja.
She was married to Karl von Appen 
a German stage designer and member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists. An organization of artists who were members of the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, or KPD). 
Known primarily by its shortened name, “Asso”, it was founded in March 1928. The organization produced posters, placards, propaganda graphics for Communist organizations.. Manjae died on 18-01-2003, age 88, in Berlin and is buried with her husband on the Waldfriedhof Weisser Hirsch, Am Heiderand in Dresden. Karl von Appen died age 81, on 22-08-1981, in Berlin.
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