Beata Margareta Kristina Söderbaum (5 September 1912 – 12 February 2001) was a Swedish-born German film actress, producer, and photographer.

In fact, she had already played the role of the innocent Aryan in a number of feature films and was well known to German audiences.

[1][3] Her youth and beauty made her a symbol of health and purity and thus an exemplary specimen of the Nazi ideal of womanhood.

[5] Two such roles were Dorothea Sturm, the doomed heroine of the antisemitic historical melodrama Jud Süß, who commits suicide by drowning after being raped by the villain,[6] and Anna in Die goldene Stadt, a Sudeten German whose desire for the city (in defiance of blood and soil) and whose seduction by a Czech result in her drowning suicide.

[7][8] Other roles included Elske in The Journey to Tilsit, the wholesome German wife whose husband betrays her with a Polish woman, but finally returns, repentant;[9] Elisabeth in Immensee, who marries a rich landowner to forget her unrequited love, and in the end decides to remain faithful even after she is widowed and her lover returns;[10] Aels in Opfergang, a woman who dies after her love affair;[10] Luise Treskow in The Great King, a miller's daughter who encourages Frederick the Great;[11] and Maria in Kolberg, a peasant girl who loyally supports the resistance to Napoleon and is the only survivor of her family.