Bernhard Minetti

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Bernhard Minetti (1934)

Bernhard Theodor Henry Minetti (born January 26, 1905 in Kiel , † October 12, 1998 in Berlin ) was a German actor .

Life

Born in Kiel, Minetti was the son of the architect Henry Minetti and his wife Johanna nee Schauz. He came from a family who immigrated to Germany in the 19th century from the northern Italian town of Crusinallo , on the northern tip of Lake Orta . From 1911 he attended a reform high school in Kiel, where he graduated from high school in 1923.

His later path to the theater led him to study German and theater studies in Munich . Here he had the opportunity to research the performances of the Münchner Kammerspiele under Hermine Körner and the works of director Hans Schweikart from an analytical perspective. In the years between 1923 and 1925, the desire to become an actor developed.

When the director of the Berlin State Theater, Leopold Jessner , announced that he would be opening a new drama school attached to the theater , Minetti called in in 1925 and was accepted. As a mentor, Jessner opened up a wide range of opportunities for Minetti. But first he had to work in the provinces. In 1927 he made his debut at the Reussisches Theater Gera as a Capuchin in Wallenstein's camp .

Until 1930 he played numerous roles at the theaters in Gera (artistic director Walter Bruno Iltz ) and Darmstadt . From 1930 until the end of the war in 1945 he was engaged at the State Theater in Berlin . Under Jürgen Fehling and Gustaf Gründgens, alongside Werner Krauss and Käthe Gold, he played the great roles offered by classical music and was one of the great theater stars of the 1930s in Berlin.

Minetti was not very interested in the film. Nevertheless, he was involved in the 1931 film adaptation of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz , where he can be seen alongside Heinrich George . In addition, Minetti was on the list of actors who were needed for film production. For Hitler's birthday on April 20, 1933, he was an actor in the world premiere of Hanns Johst's Staatsschauspiel Schlageter . In 1935 he appeared in Mussolini's play Hundred Days . Between 1934 and 1945 Minetti appeared in 17 films, including 1935 in Executioners, Women and Soldiers , 1938 in Am seidenen Faden , 1939 in the doctor's film Robert Koch, The Fighter of Death , also in 1939 as Martin Luther in Das immortliche Herz and 1940 in the propaganda film Die Rothschilds and Leni Riefenstahls Tiefland , which was made in the war years 1940–1944, but only appeared in 1954.

In post-war Germany, like Gustaf Gründgens, he was attacked as a sympathizer and beneficiary of the Nazi regime, which had made a career under Hitler and Goebbels. Nevertheless, he soon came back to theater engagements. He began the rebuilding again in the province. First he got roles in his hometown of Kiel, then went via Hamburg (where he played the leading role in the world premiere of Jahnn's drama Armut, Reichtum, Mensch und Tier ), Frankfurt am Main and the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus back to the Schillertheater in Berlin.

Here Minetti became one of the great character actors in German theater. In the 1970s he played the main roles in the premieres of the Thomas Bernhard plays . In doing so, he made the Austrian playwright very popular. He finally dedicated a very own drama with the name Minetti as the title to the actor . His director for the Bernhard plays was Claus Peymann in Stuttgart and at the Schauspielhaus Bochum .

In the radio drama production The Hobbit of the West German Radio , he took the part of the 1980 Gandalf .

Bernhard Minetti's grave in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery in Berlin

Minetti had been an ensemble member of the Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin for decades . After it was closed, he too became “unemployed” at the age of over 80; at the Berliner Ensemble he was then given his last artistic home. There, Arturo Ui's teacher in Heiner Müller's production of Bertolt Brecht's The Unstoppable Rise of Arturo Ui was his last impressive role. After his death this was taken over by Marianne Hoppe ; after her by Michael Gwisdek .

Bernhard Minetti, who was first married to Anne Gerbrandt, is the father of the actors Hans-Peter Minetti (1926–2006) and Jennifer Minetti (1940–2011) and the grandfather of the actor Daniel Minetti . Minetti was married to the resistance fighter Elisabeth Minetti (1917-2003) for the second time . Until his death in 1998 he lived alternately in Berlin and in the Eifel in Blankenheim in the Euskirchen district , where his second wife Elisabeth also died in September 2003.

Minetti's estate is available for inspection in the archive of the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) . Bernhard Minetti found his final resting place in the Protestant Dorotheenstädtisch-Friedrichwerderscher Friedhof I in the CAL department.

In 2008 the Bernhard-Minetti-Platz in Kiel-Blücherplatz was named after him.

Bernhard-Minetti-Platz in Kiel (2012)

Awards

Theater roles (selection)

Before 1945

After 1945

Filmography (selection)

Radio plays (selection)

  • 1978: Uccio Esposito Torrigiani: The deviation from the norm - Director: Wolfgang Schenck ( SR )

literature

Primary literature
  • Bernhard Minetti: Memories of an Actor. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-421-06284-6 .
Secondary literature

Web links

Commons : Bernhard Minetti  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Elisabeth Minetti , entry on the website ancestry.com of September 27, 2003 (accessed August 5, 2011)
  2. Hans-G. Hilscher, Dietrich Bleihöfer: Bernhard-Minetti-Platz. In: Kiel Street Lexicon. Continued since 2005 by the Office for Building Regulations, Surveying and Geoinformation of the State Capital Kiel, as of February 2017 ( kiel.de ).