Harry Meyen

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Harry Meyen, Romy Schneider and Rut Brandt (1971)

Harry Meyen (born August 31, 1924 in Hamburg ; † April 14, 1979 there ; actually Harald Haubenstock ) was a German actor and director .

Life

Meyen was born in 1924 as the son of a Jewish businessman who was deported to a concentration camp during the Nazi era . At the age of eighteen, Meyen was arrested as a so-called “ first degree Jewish half-breed ”. He survived the Neuengamme concentration camp and was liberated by the Americans on May 3, 1945.

Meyen's professional career began in 1945 with Willy Maertens at the Hamburg Thalia Theater , of which he was a member for seven years. He then played for three years at the Aachen City Theater and from 1955 on the Berlin theaters. He has also worked in numerous cinema productions, in which he was mostly cast as a young man from a good family, and shot with such renowned directors as Helmut Käutner , Falk Harnack and Wolfgang Staudte . In the 1955 Zuckmayer film adaptation of The Devil's General , he played a young flight officer whom Curd Jürgens spoke to as General Harras . The fact that Meyen was repeatedly offered film roles in Nazi uniform in the course of his career may not have been without an aftertaste in view of his own experiences during the Nazi era.

From the mid-sixties he turned back to the stage work and gained the reputation of a well-known and accomplished tabloid actor and director . Towards the end of his life, Meyen was often seen in television games.

As a voice actor, he lent his voice a. a. Dirk Bogarde ( crime without guilt ), Robert Mitchum ( Dick und Doof - Die Tanzmeister ; first dubbed version), Michel Piccoli ( Trio Infernal ), Peter Sellers ( Dr. Strange or: How I learned to love the bomb - but only in the Role as president) and Jean-Louis Trintignant ( Le Train ).

Tombstone Harry Meyen ,
Ohlsdorf Cemetery

Meyen was married to the actress Anneliese Römer from 1953 until the divorce in 1966 . In 1965 he met Romy Schneider and married her in 1966 in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat . Their son David Christopher was born on December 3, 1966. Meyen demanded from Romy Schneider's stepfather, Hans Herbert Blatzheim , that the management of his wife's property be transferred to him. The family initially lived in Berlin , later in Hamburg . Romy Schneider helped her husband to guest roles and work as a dubbing director in some of her films. At the Salzburg Festival, she arranged for her husband to stage a play by Thomas Bernhard , which, however, was unsuccessful. Even with two opera productions, Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser and Rossini's The Barber of Seville , Meyen was unable to meet the expectations placed in him as a director, neither by the critics nor by the audience. 1973 Schneider and Meyen separated; In 1975 the divorce followed. Romy Schneider paid Harry Meyen a severance payment of approx. 1.4 million DM. She then moved to France with their son.

Meyen suffered greatly from being separated from his child. There were no engagements, and his alcohol and pill addiction caused depression. Meyen suffered from severe migraines all his life and took, among other things, Optalidon and Staurodorm . When combined with alcohol, these drugs often cause drowsiness, fatigue, sensitivity to light, anxiety and suicidal tendencies . Meyen's consumption of intoxicants increased over the years. On Easter Sunday 1979 he was found dead by his partner, the actress Anita Lochner : he had hanged himself on the fire escape of his house in Hamburg-Harvestehude. He was buried in his family's grave at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg in grid square BO 63 (north of Mittelallee / east of Prökelmoorteich ).

Filmography

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Schneider, Romy (1938–1982) . Austrian National Tourist Office. Retrieved on March 21, 2008.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.austria.info
  2. ^ Klaus Völker : press release . Academy of Arts. December 2006. Retrieved March 21, 2008.
  3. ↑ http://www.derrick-fanclub.de/Meyen_Harry.htm
  4. ↑ Matthias Matussek , Lars-Olav Beier : The queen of pain . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 2007, p. 163 ( online - May 21, 2007 ).
  5. ↑ This is how Harry Meyen, darling of women, died ( memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), Hamburger Abendblatt from April 17, 1979. Accessed on September 1, 2010.
  6. ↑ Celebrity Graves
  7. ↑ knerger.de: Harry Meyen's grave
personal data
SURNAME Meyen, Harry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haubenstock, Harald (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor and director
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1979
Place of death Hamburg