Anna Catharina Materna

Anna Catharina Materna (née von der Lühe) (1731–1757) was a Danish actor and playwright.

She belonged to the first pioneer-troupe of actors at the Royal Danish Theatre, and later became one of the first female playwrights to have her plays performed there.

Materna was the child of the noble but poor Lieutenant Friedrich Siegfried Johann Hans von der Lühe (1705–50) and Mechtilde Siegfriede Jullern (d. 1763), and joined the theatre in 1748 when it advertised for female actors, which were in short supply for the newly opened national stage in Copenhagen.

She was also regarded and talked about as a courtesan, and had a long list of lovers; in 1753, she was offered an allowance to become a kept woman, negotiations being handled by her mother, and in the same year, she retired from the stage.

In that year, she instead married the nobleman Christian Albrecht von Passow (1732–1777) (but keeping the surname Materna), a marriage that produced a child, which was kept a secret.