Albrecht Schoenhals

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Albrecht Moritz James Karl Schoenhals (born March 7, 1888 in Mannheim , † December 4, 1978 in Baden-Baden ) was a German actor .

Life

Albrecht Schoenhals was the son of an Englishwoman and the German chief physician Gustav Schoenhals (1855–1930). He grew up in Freiburg / Breisgau and, after attending a humanistic grammar school, went to Berlin to study medicine. He then worked as a junior doctor at the Berlin Charité and volunteered as a military doctor for the field artillery regiment in Metz . In the last year of the war he suffered a severe wound on his arm, wrote his doctoral thesis while recovering and after the end of the war he joined a volunteer corps at the Döberitz Army School .

Since he had to give up his original wish to become a surgeon because of an arm injury, Albrecht Schoenhals finally decided to act and took lessons from Eduard von Winterstein . He received his first stage engagement in 1920 at the Stadttheater Freiburg , where he made his debut as “Orest” in Goethe's “ Iphigenie auf Tauris ”. He then worked in Halberstadt , again in Freiburg (1921/24), in Baden-Baden, Frankfurt am Main , Dortmund and at the Hamburger Kammerspiele (1928–34). He was discovered in Hamburg in 1934 by the UFA's head of casting and hired for a double role in Arthur Robison's love film, Prince Woronzeff . Due to his distinguished charm and the elegance of his appearance, he was committed to the roles of nobles, doctors and artists from the start. In one of his most successful films - Willi Forst's crime film Mazurka - in which he played a rapist who, years after the crime, his victim - played by Pola Negri - shot and killed by his victim , Schoenhals showed that a seemingly impeccable surface could also conceal the depths of character . In the love story Intermezzo he appeared as a mysterious player who exploited the plight of an opera diva to buy the rights to her voice from her, and in Veit Harlan's Tolstoy film adaptation of The Kreutzer Sonata as the seducer of a married woman. In a number of other films, however, Schoenhals portrayed extremely reliable, even self-sacrificing men, such as: B. in the film A Doctor's Novel , in which he goes to prison as a husband for a murder committed by his wife.

Albrecht Schoenhals' partners were the great Ufa divas such as Pola Negri , Camilla Horn and Sybille Schmitz , and the “darlings” of the National Socialist leadership, such as Lil Dagover , Olga Chekhova and Lída Baarová . His career ended abruptly when in 1940 he turned down the title role he had been offered in the smear film " Jud Süß ". After that it was only used in a few films and was also forced to take part in a Nazi propaganda film for the first time : In the youth film Cheer up, Johannes! (1941) he played a landowner whose teenage son, after his father had not looked after him and his mother had spoiled him hopelessly, was sent to a national political educational institution (Napola) , where he was taught a sense of camaraderie. Schoenhals retired to the theater and to his estate "Annenhof" near Baden-Baden.

After the end of the Second World War , he first worked as a doctor at the municipal hospital in Baden-Baden and returned - together with his wife - to the theater at the end of the 1940s. From the end of the 1940s he started making films again, in which he largely remained in his old role and often even appeared with his old partners, but gradually faded into the background as a supporting actor. From 1956 to 1968 Schoenhals was repeatedly seen in television productions. Since the early 1960s, he devoted himself increasingly to private interests such as French literature, an area in which he also worked as a translator and editor. He also recorded one of his own Baudelaire translations for the record. In 1965 Schoenhals received the gold film ribbon for “many years of outstanding work in German film”, and in 1967 the Great Federal Cross of Merit . In 1969 he returned to the cinema for a supporting role in Luchino Visconti's film The Damned . He died at the age of 90 and is buried in the Baden-Baden cemetery.

Albrecht Schoenhals was married to the actress Anneliese Born from 1930 ; their son was born in 1933.

Filmography

Until 1945

Post war films

Works

  • Ed. And Translator: Memories of French Verses. Südverlag, Constance 1948; as a new edition: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1968.
  • with Anneliese Born: Always in twos. Memories. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1970.
  • I would have loved you. Sonnets and verses for "you". With an afterword by Axel von Ambesser . Limes, Wiesbaden 1976.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Wätzold: Stammliste of the Kaiser Wilhelms-Akademie for the military medical education system: On behalf of the medical department of the Königl. War Ministry using official sources, p. 189 short biography
  2. ^ Secret State Archives, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Officer's Widow's Fund and other military supply points, 08 supply files, 08.19 letter S
  3. ↑ Life data and photo of Gustav Schoenhals  in the German Digital Library
  4. ↑ Albrecht Schönhals , Der Spiegel 50/1948, December 11, 1948
personal data
SURNAME Schoenhals, Albrecht
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schoenhals, Albrecht Moritz James Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 1978
Place of death Baden-Baden