Career
Carstens began her career as an actress before the First World War at the Court Theatre in Karlsruhe. lieutenant belonged to during the First World War and shortly thereafter the cabaret retort to the writer Ringelnatz to In 1939 she was named a state actor by Joseph Goebbels.
She played in Konstanz the first Mother Courage in the eponymous play by Bertolt Brecht on a German stage.
She began her film career 1922. The director Douglas Sirk gave her various leading roles.
After the Second World War she continued her career as a character actress. She also managed to get roles in the New German Cinema.
In the ZDF television series Der Bastian (1973) she had a role alongside Horst Janson and Karin Anselm.
She also worked extensively as a voice actor and was dubbed over Margaret Rutherford (Passport to Pimlico), Françoise Rosay (Le Joueur) and Helene Thimig (Decision Before Dawn). She received a burial at sea in the North Sea.