Serafima Birman

Serafima Germanovna Birman (Russian: Серафима Германовна Бирман; 10 August [O.S. 29 July] 1890 – 11 May 1976) was a Soviet and Russian actress, theatre director and writer. People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1946). Serafima Birman was born in Kishinyov in the Russian Empire (modern-day Chișinău, Moldova) into a Russian Orthodox family. Her father German Mikhailovich Birman was a Stabs-kapitan who served in the 51st reserve infantry battalion of the Imperial Russian Army. He came from raznochintsy, but was granted personal nobility after making a successful military career. He resigned rather early and died in 1908. Serafima described him as a "lonely, unsociable man... who had little success at finishing things, like the Moldovan-Russian dictionary he was writing for years". Her mother Elena Ivanovna Birman (née Botezat) "was a complete opposite". She came from a wealthy Moldovan family, studied in a finishing school and married as a teenager. At the time German met and married her, she was already a 19-year-old widow with two daughters. Serafima also had a younger brother, Nikolai.