In 1920, she achieved great success with films directed by Ernst Lubitsch Anna Boleyn (starring Emil Jannings) and Kohlhiesels Töchter.
In 1921 she continued working with renowned directors, highlighting the production directed by Ewald André Dupont Die Geierwally, Hintertreppe (1921), by Leopold Jessner, and the 1923 film by Robert Wiene I.N.R.I.
On 24 June 1921, she remarried, to Wilhelm von Kaufmann (1888–1959), a doctor of Jewish origin, then director of the Sanatorium "Wiggers Kurheim", in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, who thereafter took charge of the production of Porten's films.
[1] When the Nazis took power and she refused to divorce her Jewish husband, she found that her career, while doing twelve films a year, dissolved immediately.
In 1907, after finishing her studies at the De Múgica College for Elderly Daughters, the young Porten became a professional actress and worked with the Deutsche Mutoskop und Biograph GmbH before signing an exclusive contract with Messter and starring in the film Lohengrin (1910), based on the opera in three acts by Richard Wagner.
Although without great box office success at first, its striking appearance and simple style of acting exerted a magnetic effect for the public.
[5] The characters that Henny Porten played in her films, emerged from the daily life of the people and allowed German viewers to recognize familiar structures for them.
These same circles attributed the popularity of Henny to her personification of the traditional image of the German woman: a placid, voluptuous, but not erotic blonde, who embodied values such as self-sacrifice, indulgence and submission.