Günter Meisner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Günter Meisner (born April 18, 1926 in Bremen , † December 5, 1994 in Berlin ) was a German actor .

Life

Günter Meisner trained as a steel caster after high school and was a radio operator and paratrooper during the war. From 1948 he took acting lessons from Gustaf Gründgens in Düsseldorf and got his first engagement at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf .

Other stage stations were the Schauspielhaus Bochum , the grandstand in Berlin, the Junge Ensemble Berlin, the Theater am Kurfürstendamm and the Ruhr Festival in Recklinghausen . Meisner was even on stage in New York and other American cities. He also worked as a rolling mill worker, advertising specialist, servant and chauffeur.

In addition, Meisner practiced art and painting studies, which in 1959 led to the establishment of his "Galerie Diogenes " in Berlin, which he expanded three years later to include the "Diogenes Studio Theater". There he mainly staged plays by modern French dramatists of the absurd theater , such as Eugène Ionesco . Meisner also wrote his own plays. In 1960 he arranged Otto Piene's first exhibition , whose fire flower he premiered two years later.

Grave of Günter Meisner in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

His film career began in 1957 with an extra role as a Nazi soldier. As a result, the actor with the thin lips and angular facial features was assigned to similar roles. He often embodied Nazi thugs and also Adolf Hitler , especially in American and British productions . In the French film comedy Das As der Ase from 1982 with Jean-Paul Belmondo, he played both Hitler and his sister.

In German film, especially in crime novels, Meisner was often used as a villain, but also as a priest or eccentric . In the early evening series Praxis Bülowbogen , he was seen in eight episodes as a tramp.

Günter Meisner died of heart failure at the beginning of December 1994 while filming the Tatort episode The Campaign at the age of 68. His grave is in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend (grave location: 4-A-20).

social commitment

Meisner founded the “International Association for Arts and Sciences” in 1960/61 and was involved in Biafra aid from 1967 to 1969 , in the framework of which he organized aid flights for the local population in need. He flew several times as a pilot himself. He also produced films on the subject of racism in Africa .

Filmography

Web links

Commons : Günter Meisner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Meisner. Actor, director . Short biography at http://www.berlin.friedparks.de/ . Retrieved November 17, 2019.
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 491.