FROM STAGE TO CHURCH.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVI, Issue 47, 23 November 1909, Page 7

FROM STAGE TO CHURCH.

A similar experience to that recounted by Miss Ada Ward, the actressevangelist, is reported from Berlin. After having attended a Salvation Army meeting, Frau Hedwig Wangel, of the Deutsehes Theatre, one of the most famous German actresses, has astonished her friends by announcing her abandonment of the stage for a religious life. She told a friend the story of her conversion. She said:

"The honor and the soul of anybody who serves the cause of the theatre as heroically as I have done must go to eternal ruin. The theatre means ceasing to be. My decision was not taken suddenly. For two years I have been determined to leave the stage and the *orld, and devote myself entirely to a,v Saviour. I shall not join the Saltation Army, though a Salvation Army meeting I attended awakened me. It flourished the passion raging within me, tat in what way I shall walk I myself not yet know. I have forsaken all earthly things. Nothing any longer "olds mo back, and if I give up m.y family and my home to serve God it ff ill not be hard to desert my art, in *nich I saw so much that was sinful. Mv decision to turn my back on all

that is worldly and dedicate myself exflusively to Christ and brotherly love ff as hastened by the death and burial ®f Alexander Strakosch (the Berlin actor who died a few weeks ago while detuning some lines from 'King Lear'). His fleath was untimely. His life to we last was rich in earthly joys. He to leave the world unprepared, "ith his last gasp be recited an indictment of human ingratitude. It rewrcr] to one 0 f },j g p U pj] s< now a re . "ognised artist." Frau Wangel is 34 ?&ars old. She separated a few weeks j&o from her husband, Herr Carl otabernack, a well-known musician.