Diary of a Lost Girl
1929 film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Diary of a Lost Girl (German: Tagebuch einer Verlorenen) is a 1929 German silent film directed by G. W. Pabst and starring American silent star Louise Brooks. The film was shot in black and white, and diverse versions of the film ranged from 79 minutes to 116 minutes in length. This was Brooks' second and last film with Pabst, and like their previous collaboration, Pandora's Box, many film historians consider it to be a classic. It is based on the controversial and bestselling 1905 novel of the same name by Margarete Böhme. The novel had been previously adapted by Richard Oswald as Diary of a Lost Woman.
Plot
Thymian Henning, the innocent, naive daughter of pharmacist Robert Henning, is puzzled when their housekeeper, Elisabeth, leaves suddenly on the day of Thymian's confirmation. It turns out that her father has made Elisabeth pregnant. Elisabeth's body is brought to the pharmacy later that day, an apparent suicide by drowning, upsetting Thymian.
Robert Henning's assistant, Meinert, promises to explain it all to Thymian later that night but instead rapes her while she is unconscious, and she also becomes pregnant. Though Thymian refuses to name the illegitimate baby's father, her relatives find out by reading her diary and decide that the best solution is for her to marry Meinert.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Diary of a Lost Girl” as 1929 film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1929 film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q569699. VIAF identifies the subject as 231649965. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929 and 1905.
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This entry incorporates text from “Diary of a Lost Girl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.