Ewald Balser

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Bust of Ewald Balser

Ewald Balser (born October 5, 1898 in Elberfeld (today in Wuppertal ), † April 17, 1978 in Vienna ) was a German actor .

Life

Ewald Balser's tomb in the Neustift cemetery

He was the youngest of eleven children of the bricklayer Wilhelm Balser and his wife Mathilde, née Lohe. Balser originally learned the profession of goldsmith at the Elberfeld School of Applied Arts and was a soldier from 1916 until he was wounded in 1917.

After the end of the war he worked in the profession he had learned, but also took acting lessons and took on minor roles at the United Theaters of Elberfeld-Barmen. In 1919 Balser made his debut at the Elberfeld City Theater as Odoardo in Emilia Galotti . In 1923 he was engaged by the Basel City Theater . But the following year he moved to the Düsseldorf City Theater, where he made his debut in the title role of Faust . Louise Dumont was so impressed by his play in Bertolt Brecht's Mann ist Mann that she brought him to the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus . He has also made guest appearances at the Deutsches Theater Berlin and the Volksbühne Berlin , in Cologne, Darmstadt and Heidelberg. From 1921 to 1928 he worked at the Münchner Kammerspiele , from 1928 at the Vienna Burgtheater , where he played heroic roles. Guest performances have taken him to the Salzburg Festival, among others . In 1933 he moved to Berlin, where he was a member of the Volksbühne ensemble and, from 1935, of the German Theater . Balser was listed on the God-gifted list of Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels as an important artist of the Nazi state.

Career

In 1935 he made his first film, Jana, the girl from the Bohemian Forest . He found his field of activity mainly as a serious figure in film dramas , where he portrayed doctors, priests, bishops, artists and other people of respect. Increasingly, he made a name for himself in roles of important historical personalities such as Rembrandt van Rijn in Rembrandt (1942), Ferdinand Sauerbruch in Sauerbruch - That Was My Life (1954) or Beethoven in Eroica (1949) and again in Das Dreimäderlhaus (1958).

When the Burgtheater reopened after the Second World War , he played the role of Primislaus Ottokar in Franz Grillparzer's King Ottokar's Glück und Ende . He was also the first Jedermann to be seen at the Salzburg Festival after the crackdown on National Socialism . From the 1960s he concentrated again mainly on the theater. In 1963 he became an honorary member of the Burgtheater.

Balser's first wife was the actress Vera Balser-Eberle . From 1950 he was married to Ernestine Bauer, the mother of his daughter Evelyn . He collapsed during a performance in 1976 and died of cancer in April 1978. His honorary grave is in the Neustift cemetery (group E, row 1, number 1). In 1982 the Ewald-Balser-Gasse in Vienna- Liesing (23rd district) was named after him.

Filmography

Radio plays

Awards

literature

  • Ingrun Walks (ISP): Ewald Balser - actor , in CineGraph - Lexicon for German-Language Films, Lg. 34 (2000)
  • Ursula Cerha: Ewald Balser (1898-1978). Theater that touches, seduces and changes . Böhlau, Vienna 2004.

Web links

Commons : Ewald Balser  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Klee: Cultural Lexicon for the Third Reich . ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 , pp. 27 .
  2. ^ Curriculum vitae and grave of Ewald Balser (knerger.de)
  3. ↑ ARD audio game database
  4. ↑ Vienna City Hall Correspondence, December 10, 1952, sheet 1937
  5. ↑ Vienna City Hall Correspondence, December 13, 1952, sheet 1966
  6. ↑ a b List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Balser, Ewald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1978
Place of death Vienna