Commissioner Lohmann

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Commissioner Lohmann is a film character first created by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou for the film M and taken over by the directors Harald Reinl and Werner Klingler . The character appears in the following films:

What is unusual about the character of Commissioner Lohmann is that she appears as a constant in films that are not related to one another. The character is developed from a supporting role, through one of several main roles to the main role. The role of Commissioner Lohmann was played by two of the most famous German actors of their time: Otto Wernicke and Gert Fröbe .

Despite the different topoi and different designs of the films, the character of Commissioner Lohmann is constant. Otto Wernicke, who played the character in the first two “Lohmann films”, has been an outstanding actor since the 1930s.

The value of this figure was determined according to The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse from 1960, in which the character of Commissioner Lohmann did not appear, was recognized and not only used in the following Dr. Mabuse films, but also prominently cast in the person of Gert Fröbe with one of the most internationally recognized German actors at the time.

In the “Wernicke films” the character is characterized differently than in the “Fröbe films”. While Wernicke plays Commissioner Lohmann as the type of tough, principled, but compassionate and open to the social problems of his time , who is preceded by the reputation of a tough dog even in the criminal underworld , the role of Gert Fröbe becomes more intelligent, sometimes more intellectual and clarified bureaucrat defined.

The Berlin criminal police officer Ernst Gennat is considered a real role model for Inspector Lohmann .

The main character in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is called Loman , and Miller himself claimed the name from The Testament of Dr. To have taken over Mabuse . In his autobiography Timebends: A Life he writes:

"What the name really meant to me was a terror-stricken man calling into the void for help that will never come."

"For me, the name actually referred to a man overwhelmed by horror who calls out into the void for help that will never come."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Director and screenplay
  2. ↑ script
  3. ↑ M is not related to the content of the other three films mentioned
  4. ↑ in M
  5. ↑ in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
  6. ↑ ab In the steel network of Dr. Mabuse
  7. ^ Both before and during the time of National Socialism and later in the Federal Republic of Germany ; During the National Socialist era, Wernicke was not banned from appearing in spite of his adherence to his marriage to his Jewish wife, as was customary with other actors - the result of his indispensability as an actor; see. Otto Wernicke .