Fritz Wendhausen

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Fritz Wendhausen (born August 7, 1890 in Wendhausen ; † January 5, 1962 in Königstein im Taunus ; born Fritz Schulze ) was a German actor , theater director , film director and screenwriter .

Life

He studied art history, history and philosophy and completed his studies with a doctorate. He then took acting lessons and began his stage career in 1916 as an actor and assistant dramaturge in Leipzig .

In 1917 he became senior director in Mainz and in 1919 in Mannheim . In 1920 Max Reinhardt brought him to Berlin as a director at the Deutsches Theater and the Große Schauspielhaus . There he staged, among others, Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw (1920), The Passion by Wilhelm Schmidtbonn (1921), Anna Christie (1923), Das Caféhaus by Carlo Goldoni (1923) and You shall not kill (1924).

In 1921 he made his debut as a film director. He usually wrote the script for his films himself. An artistic experiment was the film ballad Der Steinerne Reiter in 1923 , which he wrote based on an idea by the screenwriter Thea von Harbou and staged in stylized decorations influenced by Expressionism . A successful film by Wendhausen in 1927 was the peasant drama The Hagar's son based on the popular novel by Paul Keller . He also ventured into politically and socially topical subjects such as in The First Right of the Child with Hertha Thiele (1932).

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he initially came to terms with the regime and in 1933 joined the NSBO cell of film directors of German origin. His most elaborate and ambitious work was in 1934 Peer Gynt with the leading actor Hans Albers . At that time, Wendhausen was temporarily married to the actress Hanna Ralph .

In 1938 he emigrated to Great Britain. From 1940 he worked for the German speaking service of the BBC . He spoke on numerous broadcasts aimed at German listeners in Nazi Germany. In the radio play series Kurt he was the voice of the old-fashioned and generous teacher Kurt, who contradicts his fanatical colleague Willi. As an actor under the names of FR Wendhousen , FR Wendhausen and Frederick Wendhausen, he played threatening Nazi officers in several British films .

After the end of the war he occasionally returned to Berlin and staged various plays at the Hebbel Theater and at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm , including The Glass Menagerie . In 1959 he received the Federal Cross of Merit .

Filmography (as a director)

  • 1932: Goethe memorial film - 1. The career (also commentary)
  • 1932: The child's first right
  • 1933: Little Man - What Now? (also script)
  • 1934: The Black Whale (also screenplay)
  • 1934: Peer Gynt
  • 1935: Artist's love (also screenplay)
  • 1936: family parade
  • 1938: Marriage swindler / Die Rote Mütze (script only)
  • 1942: The First of the Few (actors only)
  • 1942: Secret Mission (actors only)
  • 1943: Tomorrow We Live (actors only)
  • 1946: Lisbon Story (actors only)
  • 1946: Impatience of the Heart ( Beware of Pity ; actors only)
  • 1950: Odette (actor only)
  • 1953: Seconds of Desperation ( Desperate Moment ; actors only)
  • 1958: The Silent War ( Orders to Kill ; actors only)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 530 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 656.
personal data
SURNAME Wendhausen, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schulze, Fritz (original name); Wendhousen, FR; Wendhausen, FR; Wendhausen, Frederick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor, film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Wendhausen
DATE OF DEATH 5th January 1962
Place of death Königstein im Taunus