Lothar Mehnert

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Lothar Mehnert (* 21st February 1875 in Berlin , † 30th November 1926 in Dresden ) was a German actor of stage and silent film as well as a theater director.

Live and act

Mehnert came from a Berlin merchant family and decided early on to become an actor. He made his theater debut in Göttingen in 1894. Subsequently (1895/96) Mehnert belonged to the ensemble of the Meiniger court theater. Other early theater stations (up to the beginning of the 20th century) were Heidelberg, Graz and Leipzig. At the theater there, he made his breakthrough with Bonvivant roles. In 1905 Lothar Mehnert came to Dresden for the first time, where he finally settled and was to celebrate his greatest stage successes. His current role was character roles, and he received the most encouragement from salon pieces: “He was greatest in satirical, ironically superior roles, and his style of representation in classical roles was broad; he was not an episode actor, he dominated the scene; his King Philip, his Wallenstein, his President in 'Cabal and Love' were full of force and Urgency, but only gradually matured… ”Other star roles were Richard III, the carter Henschel, King Friedrich Wilhelm in“ Braid and Sword ”and Konrad Bolz in Gustav Freytag's“ Die Journalisten ”.

In 1919 Lothar Mehnert was appointed senior director and deputy director of the Dresdner Schauspielhaus for life, and shortly afterwards he was brought in front of the camera for a few mostly less important roles in silent films - including an early work by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau with Vogelöd Castle . When he died in the autumn of 1926 at the age of only 51, he was paid homage to in the Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch with the following words: “He dominated the scene equally well in classical as in modern drama. His charmers in the conversation piece were delightful, making him one of the most brilliant representatives of this genre on the German stage. ”In the last years of his life, a persistent illness limited his artistic work. Mehnert's death mask, cast in bronze, adorned the gallery of the Dresden theater for many years.

Filmography

  • 1920: The gallant king
  • 1921: Vogelöd Castle
  • 1922: The revenge of the African woman

literature

  • Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 663, ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • German Stage Yearbook 1928, hrgg. from the Cooperative of German Stage Members. P. 98 (obituary).
  • Wilhelm Kosch : Deutsches Theater-Lexikon, Biographisches und Bibliographisches Handbuch, second volume, Klagenfurt a. Vienna 1960, p. 1412

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deutsches Theater-Lexikon, second volume, p. 1412
  2. ↑ German Stage Yearbook 1928, p. 98

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mehnert, Lothar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor on stage and silent film as well as a theater director
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1926
Place of death Dresden