Carla von Lahnstein
| Carla von Lahnstein | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Claudia Hiersche as Carla von Lahnstein (2008) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Verbotene Liebe | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Portrayed by | Claudia Hiersche | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Duration | 2003-2009, 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| First appearance | Episode 2060 September 19, 2003 |
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| Last appearance | Episode 3559 February 11, 2010 |
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| Cause/reason | Left town with Stella for a world tour. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Gender | Female | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation | Majority owner and executive director of the Lahnstein Holding Expert in modern art Former manager of the Lahnstein auctioneers |
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| Title | Countess of Lahnstein Heiress to the Lahnstein fortune |
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Carla Sophia von Lahnstein is a fictional character from the German soap opera Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love), portrayed by actress Claudia Hiersche. She made her first appearance on screen on September 19, 2003[1] and left the show on November 10, 2009.[2] Hiersche then returned for a guest stint on January 29, 2010 and will leave the show again in February 2010. Her role as the lesbian businesswoman was praised by critics and became a fan favorite with a strong following. The character wrote history with being part of the first lesbian wedding in a German television series in 2006[3].
[edit] Storylines
We get to know Carla as the oldest daughter of the aristocrat Johannes von Lahnstein (Thomas Gumpert) and a very smart and strong businesswoman. She is a lesbian, but because she is afraid her father would contravenes her, she starts out keeping her sexual orientation a secret. Only her younger brother Leonard (Lars Korten) knows about Carla's love for women.
When Carla meets Hanna Novak (Katharina Dalichau), a straight woman, who is in a relationship with the attorney Lars Schneider (Herbert Ulrich), she falls in love with her. she, however, doesn't think that she has any chance. Hanna and Carla begin to build a deep and good friendship which shatters when Hanna gets confronted with Carla's feelings for her. Hanna tells her that she loves Lars and isn't bisexual. Carla understands, but can't go on with their friendship. When Carla keeps a distance to her, Hanna notices that she cares for Carla and might feel more for her than she thought.
Meanwhile, Carla develops a friendship with Bernd von Beyenbach (Ron Holzschuh), who falls in love with the young and attractive countess. But every approach that Bernd is doing fails and he can't tell why. When Bernd witnesses a fight between Carla and her former lover, her assistant Evelyn Thoma, she tells Bernd the truth. Carla wants to buy Bernd's silence about her homosexuality, but Bernd tells her that he remains silent because of their friendship. Carla sees that she found a good and loyal friend in Bernd. When Evelyn crashes Johannes' wedding with Cécile de Maron (Yvonne Burbach) to tell everyone that Carla is a lesbian, Bernd comes to her rescue and presents himself as Carla's fiancé. To Carla's shock, Johannes takes the moment and makes an official announcement about his daughters engagement. Bernd moves in with Carla to present them as a happy couple.
When Hanna hears about Carla's engagement with Bernd, she is shocked and confused and comes to the castle to speak with Carla. After she knows about the circumstances, she is happy and confesses her love to Carla. When Lars finds out that Hanna left him for Carla, he wants revenge, but Hanna can persuade him to stay quiet. Meanwhile, Carla finally wants to tell her father the truth but at the last minute she can't go through with it. Bernd on the other side is happy to stay and continue as Carla's fiancé. A role he quickly learned to live with.
Hanna and Carla have a secret love affair, but their relationship has to face trouble, when Bernd's daughter Vanessa (Inez Björg David) wants to take revenge on Lars for rejecting her and asserts that he raped her. Lars sees that Vanessa's lie could ruin him and blackmails Bernd with his fake engagement to Carla. When Hanna finds out about Lars' situation, she wants to help him but Lars is still upset that she left him for Carla. They have a huge fight, in which Lars pushes her down the stairs by accident. Hanna is wounded, but won't see a doctor. When Leonard looks after her and sees a blue stain on her back, he persuades her to go in the hospital. The diagnose is a shock, when Hanna needs surgery and loses a kidney. Carla is worried about her and despairs when the doctors tell Hanna that her second kidney is soon to fail too. Hanna's nephew Felix von Beyenbach (Stefan Kirch) and Lars ask all their friends to get tested for a donation, but all results are negative - except for one: Hanna's hated sister Sylvia Jones (Heike Brentano) is the perfect donor. Hanna, however, doesn't want anything from Sylvia. Carla is very upset over it and fears to lose Hanna for good. When Hanna sees how much Carla is suffering over the situation, she decides to take Sylvia's kidney.
After the successful donation, Carla is happy to finally have her great love safe and with her but Hanna is hunted by nightmares about her death. She is convinced that she will die. Hanna reconciles with her sister and enjoys a getaway with Carla. When they get back, Hanna and Carla spend a night on the Rhine, where Carla gets confronted with Hanna's prevision about her death. Carla can't believe it and dreams about a future together with Hanna. They both fall asleep and spend the whole night on the water. When Carla wakes up the next morning, she realizes that Hanna is dead. She falls into a shock, while Hanna's body gets picked up. Days later, she realizes that Hanna is really gone and in her grief over her great love, she tells Ansgar (Wolfram Grandezka) about her love for Hanna, not knowing that he will hold that against his sister.
Carla finally wants to come clean to her father about her sexual orientation, but Ansgar talks her out of it. When her former lover, Evelyn Thoma, returns in Carla's life, Ansgar hopes that they will get close again. Carla doesn't want anything to do with Evelyn. Ansgar installs a web cam and hopes that he gets prove out of Carla's own mouth. Meanwhile, with Hanna's sudden death, Carla decides to make her camouflage perfect and wants to marry Bernd. On the wedding day, Ansgar sends Johannes a video with Carla's confession about her homosexuality. Disappointed by his daughter, she tries to explain everything to him, but Johannes wouldn't let her and wants her to marry Bernd. With tears in her eyes, Carla gives Bernd the word of consent.
Carla's marriage with Bernd gets rocky, when she sees more and more what Bernd is really interested: the title and money of the Lahnstein family. He gets a position at the Lahnstein Holding, but soon gets unpopular by Ansgar and Johannes. Later, Bernd even becomes a prime suspect in the murder of Donald Rush (Andreas Engelmann), but is found innocent after Sylvia alibi's in the last minute. Bernd isn't Carla's only problem. His daughter Vanessa fears that she could lose the luxuries afforded by Bernd's marriage to Carla and tells Carla that she is a lesbian herself to get her friendship. Carla has a short affair with Anke Hoffmann, but Vanessa claims that Anke is interested in her, which destroys the relationship between Carla and her. Soon, Carla realizes that Vanessa played her. When Bernd is proved innocent, she has finally had enough and files for divorce.
Following the drama with Bernd, Carla meets Susanne Brandner (Claudia Scarpatetti), who was recently divorced from her husband Alex (Frank Behnke) and who had moved back to her hometown from Buenos Aires. Susanne has an adopted son, Paul (Tobias Schönenberg), and also had custody of her stepdaughter, Lisa (Lilli Hollunder), but longed for another child. In fall 2006, Carla and Susanne marry and decide to have a baby together. Susanne wants Lars Schneider to be the father for their child. Carla is skeptical because of her history with Lars but when she sees that she and Lars can be friends, she agrees. Susanne wants to carry the baby and is heartbroken when she discovers that she is infertile. Then Carla agrees to bear the baby, even though she has a problem again with the fact that Lars will be the father. She eventually resigns herself to that fact and gets pregnant through a sperm donation. During her pregnancy, Carla decides to work in New York for some time, before she returns to the wedding of her best friend Nathalie Käppler (Jenny Winkler) with her brother Ansgar.
With her long departure, she soon needs to realizes that a lot has happened, when she finds Susanne and Lars as good friends. Carla gets really disappointed, when she finds out that Susanne's daughter Lisa was kidnapped while she was in New York and Carla didn't tell her about that. The problems between them get more serious when Susanne begins to develop serious romantic feelings for Lars. Carla feels that Susanne is slipping away from their marriage and has a one-night-stand with her old fried Frederike von Traunitz. Even though the birth of their daughter Sophia brings Carla and Susanne close again, they soon realize that their marriage failed. They get divorced in early 2008, where both confess that they will always have feelings for each other. After a relationship with Lars didn't work out for Susanne, because of her feelings for Carla, Susanne decides to leave town and search together with daughter Lisa for happiness in France, where her son Paul has lived for a while now.
After her marriage with Susanne failed, Carla becomes more and more a businesswoman, after her father died after his plan crashed. She becomes the majority owner of the Lahnstein empire and works together with her stepmother Elisabeth (Martina Servatius). When her daughter Sophia gets kidnapped by Adrian Degenhardt (Klaus Zmorek), Carla fears to see her daughter never again. They pay twice ransom to the - for the Lahnsteins - anonymous kidnapper, before it is Adrian that "rescues" Sophia. Constantin (Milan Marcus) gets suspicious about Adrian's involvement in Sophia's kidnapping, but nothing can be proved and Adrian remains as Sophia's rescuer. After the shocking kidnapping of her daughter, Carla is working a lot again and begins to long for a new relationship. Elisabeth and Nathalie try to pair her with somebody (Ilka), but it doesn't work out.
But Carla's next destined meeting comes, when she meets the young, attractive and saucy Stella Mann (Anne Wis). Carla gets splashed with water by Stella, when she drives through a puddle. It's a big surprise for both women when Stella later wants to have the job as the new caretaker on Castle Königsbrunn.
