Michael Degen

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Michael Degen, 2012,
Studio Hamburg Young Talent Award (on the red carpet )

Michael Max Degen (born January 31, 1932 in Chemnitz ) is a German - Israeli theater and film actor and writer .

Live and act

youth

Michael Degen is a son of Jakob Degen, professor of languages ​​and businessman of Jewish faith and of Russian origin, and his wife Anna. In 1933 they moved with him and his four years older brother Adolf von Chemnitz to Berlin-Tiergarten . In the winter of 1939/40 his brother was sent by his parents to Palestine via Denmark and Sweden to save him from the Nazi tyranny because of his Jewish origins . In September 1939 the Gestapo deported his father. Although he survived the Sachsenhausen concentration camp despite severe injuries, he died shortly after his release from the consequences of the torture he had suffered in April 1940.

Michael Degen attended the Jewish school until it was closed in 1942. In view of the evictions of their neighbors by the Gestapo in 1943, his mother spontaneously decided to save herself and her son from access. Eight times they had to change their hiding place while fleeing under a false identity until they could stay and survive in a colony of arbor with non-Jewish friends, the communists Marie-Luise and Carl Hotze in the Berlin district of Kaulsdorf . In 2019, 41 stumbling blocks were laid in front of the Hotze family's house on An der Wuhle .

Acting training

As early as 1946, Michael Degen began training as an actor at the Deutsches Theater in what was then the Soviet sector of Berlin with the help of a scholarship . There he got his first engagement. In 1949, at the request of his mother, he emigrated to the young state of Israel , whose citizenship the previously stateless person received. He served there with the Israeli forces during the Israeli War of Independence , but he refused to carry a weapon and the oath of allegiance lay.

During this time he found his older brother, Adolf Degen, who was wounded in the war, in a hospital and learned New Hebrew with his help . Then he was engaged at the Kammerspiele in Tel Aviv . After a two-year stay, he left Israel and returned to Germany.

Working life

Michael Degen, 2006

In Berlin, he again played in the ensemble of Bertolt Brecht at the Deutsches Theater . Numerous engagements followed in the next decades on the stages of Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Munich, Salzburg, Hamburg and Vienna. In the course of his theater and film career he worked - alongside the aforementioned Bertolt Brecht - with important directors such as George Tabori ( The Cannibals , 1969), Ingmar Bergman ( Miss Julie , 1981, Don Juan von Molière , Salzburg Festival 1983), Claude Chabrol ( The Elective Affinities of Goethe , 1981), Rudolf Noelte and Peter Zadek ( Ghetto of Joshua Sobol , 1984) together.

Michael Degen, 2011

Michael Degen first became known to the television audience through his role (Grünlich) in Franz Peter Wirth's television series Die Buddenbrooks (1979). In the 1980s, she made appearances in television films such as Dieter Wedels Mittags auf dem Roten Platz (1983), Egon Monk's Die Geschwister Oppermann (1983), Peter Beauvais ' Die Ewigen Demokratie (1984) and Michael Kehlmann's Geheime Reichssache (1987). In the latter film, which deals with the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis in 1938, Degen played the role of Hitler.

Since 1986 Degen has been avoiding political statements in public because he received death threats after a protest against a meeting of the “ Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler ” and his apartment in Hamburg was ransacked.

For many television viewers, he was most permanently remembered for one of the most popular series of the late 1980s on the side of Witta Pohl and Günter Strack : These Drombuschs (from 1989). From 2000 to 2019 he was in the ARD crime series Donna Leon in the role of Vice-Questore Patta.

Since 2002 Michael Degen has also appeared as a writer . Degen's autobiography Not all were murderers (2002) 2006 for the ARD filmed . In collaboration with Degen, Jo Baier wrote the script and also directed .

2010/11 and 2014 played sword in the play Heldenplatz by Thomas Bernhard and I can think of nothing to Hitler in the theater in the Josefstadt .

Private

Degen has two children from two marriages. A daughter from his first marriage to the artist Sarah Eckel is the actress Elisabeth Degen ( Aimée & Jaguar , after so many years ). In 2009 they both appeared in the short film Kriegerstock and in 2017 in the film Winterjagd . Degen is third married to the journalist Susanne Sturm and lives near Hamburg.

Awards

Filmography (selection)

theatre

Books

Radio plays

Audio books

Web links

Commons : Michael Degen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Interviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralf Fischer and Jan Poppke: “I just want to have more time.” In: HaGalil.com , interview at the Leipzig Book Fair , accessed on May 17, 2015.
  2. ↑ Barbara Jänichen: Michael Degen's underground life is filmed. Actor writes the script with Joe Baier. In: Die Welt , December 8, 2004.
  3. ↑ a b Anja Höfer: Laughing against fear. Michael Degen's Jewish childhood in Nazi Berlin. In: literaturkritik.de , May 1, 2000.
  4. ↑ Dieter Wunderlich : Michael Degen / Biography , accessed on May 17, 2015.
  5. ↑ Kristian Ronneburg : Memorial walk in Kaulsdorf - stumbling stone exhibition in the Kiez office
  6. ↑ Press release: “Marzahn-Hellersdorf 1933 to 1945” - opening of the new exhibition on the theme year “Diversity Destroyed” - on March 24th. in the Marzahn-Hellersdorf district museum. In: District Office Marzahn-Hellersdorf , March 12, 2013.
  7. ^ Laying the stumbling block for Marie-Luise and Carl Hotze. Press release from the Marzahn-Hellersdorf District Office, November 21, 2019.
  8. ↑ Biography Michael Degen. In: whoswho.de , accessed on May 17, 2015.
  9. ↑ Yvonne Weiß meets Michael Degen. Father Courage. ( Memento from May 17, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Hamburger Abendblatt , Saturday / Sunday, 4./5. December 2010, magazine, talk of the town, page III.
  10. ↑ Sebastian Rattunde: obituaries. Sarah Brigitte Eckel (born 1940). Your path to art is one with many approaches and talents. In: Tagesspiegel , March 10, 2011.
  11. ↑ http://www.filmstarts.de/kritiken/251100.html Winter hunting
personal data
SURNAME Sword, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Degen, Michael Max (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Israeli theater and film actor
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Chemnitz , Germany