Charles Regnier

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Charles Regnier, 1998
Charles Regnier,
drawing by Günter Rittner , 1964
Charles Regnier's autograph

Karl Friedrich Anton Hermann "Charles" Regnier (born July 22, 1914 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † September 13, 2001 in Bad Wiessee ) was a German actor , director , radio play speaker and translator . Some sources incorrectly name 1915 as Regnier's year of birth. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of the busiest German theater and film actors. His idiosyncratic, decidedly intellectual style of play and his sometimes slightly mocking, distant demeanor became his trademarks and made him a sought-after character actor.

Live and act

Regnier owes its name to his grandfather, a native of Alsace. Charles was the first child of the married couple Anton Karl Regnier and Emile (Milly) Maria Friederike Harrer in Freiburg im Breisgau. The father was a general practitioner, which is why his son Charles initially wanted to become a doctor as well. His dream was to travel around the world like his childhood idol Albert Schweitzer and to help people.

Regnier grew up in Strasbourg and in Badenweiler , where his maternal grandparents owned the hotel "Schloss Hausbaden". After the father's suicide in 1924, the mother and four sons first moved to Heidelberg , then to Montreux on Lake Geneva . When the mother fell ill with tuberculosis in 1929 , the family decided to move to Davos . In the Swiss climatic health resort Charles made the acquaintance of a number of famous personalities, including the writer Alfred Henschke alias " Klabund ", who aroused Regnier's interest in literature and theater. Together with his brothers, Charles performed Klabund's comedy XYZ - Spiel zu Drei in their private living room . His first acting performance was the main role of contained therein Comtesse Y . "As an actor, I have never had the opportunity to appear as a lady again since then, but often to show how to act as a lady," wrote Regnier in his personal memories.

The early death of the father meant that the family slowly became impoverished. After moving several times to smaller and smaller dwellings, the mother decided to move to Berlin with her sons in 1930 . Here Regnier met the writer Ernst Blass , who was almost completely blind. He visited the sick man regularly to read from books to him. Ernst Blass had an intellectually and artistically formative influence on the young Charles. Despite extreme poverty, Regnier managed to occasionally take acting classes. A little later (probably 1932) he played his first film role in the film La lettre, which Regnier shot with friends in Prague . The film tells the touching story of an unemployed person who wins the lottery but tragically loses his ticket.

In 1933, when Hitler was already in power, Regnier finally wanted to attend a state drama school. But he failed the exams at the Reichstheaterkammer several times . "Please don't come back," they suggested to him after the last exam. When the National Socialists began to reorganize the German cultural scene according to their ideas, Regnier was arrested in 1934 and interned in Lichtenburg , one of the first German concentration camps, on charges of homosexuality . After nine months he was released after he - like many other prisoners - had to sign that he would not report anything about the terrible events in the concentration camp. Traumatized by his imprisonment, Regnier fled to Italy, where he opened a small souvenir shop in Portofino . Since the business brought little in, Regnier returned to Berlin and completed a private training course there.

Regnier received his first engagement in 1938 at the theater in Greifswald . Here he met the actress and singer Pamela Wedekind , one of the two daughters of the playwright Frank Wedekind , whom he married on June 21, 1941 in Berlin. In 1941 Regnier was appointed to the ensemble of the Münchner Kammerspiele by Otto Falckenberg , of which he was a member until 1958. From 1946 he also worked as an acting teacher at the newly founded Otto Falckenberg School .

Regnier began his career as a film actor in 1949 with the role of “Bertram” in the film Der Ruf, written by Fritz Kortner and directed by Josef von Báky . But he also worked as a theater actor among the most important directors of his time. In 1951 he played “Riccaut de la Marlinière” in Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm (director: Fritz Kortner), in 1952 in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Die Ehe des Herr Mississippi (director: Hans Schweikart ), in 1953 in Ferdinand Raimund's Der Bauer als Millionär (director: Heinz Hilpert ). Regnier's portrayal of the atomic physicist Oppenheimer in Heinar Kipphardt's play In the Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the appearance in Peter Weiss ' play The Persecution and Murder of Jean Paul Marat… were also highly praised . In the latter two roles, Regnier was also seen on television, for which the plays were successfully filmed in 1964 and 1967 respectively.

From 1961 to 1962 he was a member of the ensemble at the Vienna Burgtheater . He made no distinction between "serious" art and entertainment art. “My work must be effective, amusing, in short: pleasant for the audience.” And so Regnier did not shy away from taking part in entertainment films of various genres. At the side of Gert Fröbe he played in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1962), in the Edgar Wallace film adaptation of The Black Abbot (1963) alongside Klaus Kinski . Together with Heinz Rühmann , he stood in front of the camera in Die Duck rings at half past seven (1968).

Regnier sometimes shot more than ten films a year and acted in over 100 cinema and television films. From 1973 to 1975 he had his own TV series on ZDF with Murder Commission , in which he played chief inspector Georg Wieker in over 26 episodes. In Radu Gabrea's film Ein Mann wie EVA (1984) he played alongside Eva Mattes , in Margarethe von Trotta's film Rosa Luxemburg (1985) alongside Barbara Sukowa and in Cascadeur - The Hunt for the Amber Room (1998) he was alongside Heiner Lauterbach seen on the screen.

Charles Regnier's grave

In addition, Regnier staged plays, wrote screenplays and made a name for himself as a translator. He translated mainly French writers such as Georges Simenon , Jean Cocteau , François Mauriac and Sidonie Gabrielle Colette , but also British authors such as William Somerset Maugham . Regnier was also a busy radio play speaker. Count Dracula , whom he spoke in several episodes for the record label Europa , and that of the Minister in the children's radio play Sängerkrieg der Heidehasen by James Krüss were among his most famous radio play roles .

In the 1980s and 1990s, Regnier focused on the upscale tabloid theater. Together with his second wife, the actress Sonja Ziemann , Regnier regularly went on theater tours in Germany, Austria and Switzerland well into old age . At the age of over 80 he was still traveling through the republic with his solo program “Charles Regnier reads Oscar Wilde ”. In his last stage role in the play Endspurt by Peter Ustinov in 1999, he played an eighty-year-old writer who was confined to bed and wheelchair and who sums up the most important events of his life and reunites with his alter egos from earlier times. In Oskar Roehler's award-winning film Die Unberührbare (2000) Regnier made his last film appearance as the benevolent father of the writer Gisela Elsner .

Regnier lived in Germany, Italy and Switzerland. He died on September 13, 2001 after a stroke in Bad Wiessee. He was buried in the Badenweiler-Lipburg cemetery , the place where he grew up.

His written estate is in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

family

Regnier had three brothers: Henri Regnier , who was head of entertainment at Norddeutscher Rundfunk from 1962 to 1982 ; Axel Regnier (1916–2006), also an actor and producer for Bayerischer Rundfunk , and Georg Regnier (1923–1996).

Her first marriage to actress and singer Pamela Wedekind , with whom Regnier was married from 1941 until her death in 1986, had three children: the concert guitarist and author Anatol Regnier , the actress Carola Regnier and the violinist Adriana Regnier, from the 17th century Married February 1974 to music teacher and flute soloist Peter Schiffers. The two sons from this marriage are Stephan Schiffers , film director and screenwriter, and Heinrich Schiffers , musician and film composer.

From 1989 until his death in 2001 Regnier was married to the actress Sonja Ziemann .

Awards

In 1955 Regnier was awarded the German Critics' Prize of the Association of German Critics. In 1989 he received during the awarding of the German Film Prize , the German Film Award for many years of outstanding achievements in German film. In addition, Regnier was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit .

Quotes

The Süddeutsche Zeitung described his importance as an actor in its obituary of September 14, 2001 as follows:

"Charles Regnier has shaped the German theater like few other actors and has given German cinema a continuity that has so far hardly been noticed."

The writer and journalist Christian Ferber wrote about Regnier:

“For an actor, intelligence is not always a gift from heaven. It stands in the way of some people. There are few in whom the agility of the mind has merged with the blessing of great talent so easily and so happily as in Charles Regnier. "

The quote is ascribed to Regnier himself:

"Those who trim their inclinations create urges."

Filmography (selection)

Theater (selection)

Radio plays and audio books (selection)

See also

Lichtenburg concentration camp: known prisoners

literature

Web links

Commons : Charles Regnier  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Wedekind from Horst Kr. Neustadt am Rübenberge in Lower Saxony. In: Lower Saxony gender book. Volume 187 (1982), pp. 481-634, here p. 532
  2. ↑ Münchner Merkur , 15./16. September 2001
  3. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Charles Regnier
  4. ^ Charles Regnier Archive inventory overview on the website of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
  5. ^ Wedekind from Horst Kr. Neustadt am Rübenberge in Lower Saxony. In: Lower Saxony gender book. Volume 187 (1982), pp. 481-634, here pp. 532-533
personal data
SURNAME Regnier, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Regnier, Charles Friedrich Antonio (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor, director and translator
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 2001
Place of death Bad Wiessee