OE Hasse

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OE Hasse as Mephisto in Faust I , 1945

Otto Eduard "OE" Hasse (born July 11, 1903 in Obersitzko , † September 12, 1978 in Berlin ) was a German actor , director , radio play and voice actor .

Life

As a child, the son of a blacksmith gained his first theater experience at his school in Kolmar / Posen, together with his classmate Berta Drews . After graduating from high school, Hasse began studying law in Berlin , which he broke off after three semesters. He switched to further training as an actor at the Max Reinhardt School at the Deutsches Theater. After he had successfully completed this, he performed at the Berlin “Junge Bühne”, at the Harz Summer Theater in Thale , in Breslau and at the Münchner Kammerspiele . Here he also worked as a director.

In the spring of 1939, Hasse was sentenced to two months in prison in Munich for homosexuality under Section 175 , which was considered a relatively mild sentence according to the criminal practice at the time. His integrity , his confession and his artistic achievements were rated as mitigating the penalty . So was Hitler of hatred appearance in Caesar and Cleopatra was "very impressed". After Hasse's release from prison, the Munich Inspector of the Security Police (IdS), SS- Oberführer Beutel , gave him the assurance that he would have "no professional difficulties" to expect. This was due to a so-called “special permit” from Goebbels . In 1939 Hasse received a contract in Prague for the German Theater founded there and from then on used the name O. E. Hasse. After he was again suspended as "intolerable" in October 1940 at the instigation of a competing actor, Goebbels prevailed against the German governor in Prague Karl Hermann Frank and had the suspension lifted.

Hasse began his film career in 1931 with minor supporting roles, e. B. in Stukas (1941), Rembrandt (1942) or Dr. Crippen on board (1942). Hasse had great international success in the Hitchcock film Ich confess ( I Confess , 1953) alongside Montgomery Clift and in Germany with the title role in the film Canaris (1954). Hasse played in two parts of the “ 08/15 ” trilogy (alongside Joachim Fuchsberger ) (1955), in the comedy film Kitty and the Big World (1956) (alongside Romy Schneider ), in Arsène Lupine, the millionaire (1957) as Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Next to Liselotte Pulver ) and as public prosecutor von Treskow in the Spoerl film adaptation of The Muzzle by Wolfgang Staudte (1958). He was also involved in the novel adaptations of Mrs. Warren's Trade (1960) based on George Bernard Shaw and The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi (1961) based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt . Crime fans also know O. E. Hasse from The Death Rays of Dr. Mabuse (1964).

His portrayal of the medical officer was known in the film The Doctor of Stalingrad, based on the novel by Heinz G. Konsalik , about the experiences of the imprisonment of the doctor Ottmar Kohler - alongside Eva Bartok as a Russian doctor and the young Mario Adorf as a paramedic. Hasse was equally present with appearances on stage and on the screen. In 1961 he went on a tour of the USA with Elisabeth Bergner with the stage play Geliebter Lügner (an exchange of letters between G. B. Shaw and Stella Patrick Campbell ) by Jerome Kilty. In 1967 he appeared as Winston Churchill in Rolf Hochhuth's controversial play Soldiers at the Freie Volksbühne in Berlin. In 1971 he played the title role of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Burgtheater in Vienna under the direction of Gerhard Klingenberg .

Honor grave, Hüttenweg 47, in Berlin-Dahlem

While Hasse's style of representation was initially characterized by an expressive and often theatrical style of playing from the twenties, which was also expressed in an often exalted manner of speaking with sometimes exaggerated stresses of individual sentence passages, he developed a very concentrated, withdrawn style of playing with increasing age. He succeeded in giving his characters a unique effect with a very reserved and purposeful use of body language and his increasingly distinctive rough, dark voice.

Hasse only came into contact with television late. 1975 filmed Peter Zadek the play ice age by Tankred Dorst with Hasse in the role of nonagenarian Literature Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun - according to many critics one of the most impressive roles of the actor. Hasse repeated the successful collaboration with Zadek in 1977 in the television adaptation of Brendan Behan's play Die Geisel . His last artistic work was the theater role of the servant Shunderson in Curt Goetz ' Dr. med. Job Praetorius in the Berlin Comedy on Kurfürstendamm .

In 1959, Hasse was a member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival . He was, among others, the distinctive German dubbing voice of Charles Laughton , Humphrey Bogart , Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable . His radio play roles include, for example, the character of Captain Queeg in the radio version of Die Caine was her fate after Herman Wouk (1954).

OE Hasse belonged to a generation that strictly separated their private and professional lives. Even if he never denied his homosexuality , it was still difficult for him as an artist in the prudish 1950s and in view of possible criminal prosecutions under § 175 StGB to be able to live such an identity. Like others of his contemporaries, he was forced to treat his inclination as a secret affair. His partner for the last three decades was Max Wiener, who was a member of the Ringier Executive Committee for a certain time .

The OE Hasse Prize has been awarded annually since 1981 by the OE Hasse Foundation, which is supervised by the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) . This fulfills the legacy of the actor who was awarded a prize to promote the next generation of actors. The prizes are awarded by the foundation to young actors in spoken and musical theater. Hasse was buried in the Dahlem forest cemetery. The grave is one of the Berlin graves of honor .

His written estate is in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Filmography

Radio plays

Awards

media

  • Theodor Fontane: Yes, I would still like to experience that. Audio book read by O. E. Hasse. CD, Universal Music, ISBN 3-8291-1205-X .
  • Thomas Mann and OE Hasse read THOMAS MANN. "Difficult hour" and "Confessions of the impostor Felix Krull" Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2007, ISBN 978-3-7857-3013-3 .

literature

  • Otto Eduard Hasse: O. E .: Unfinished Memoirs. Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-442-06344-2 .
  • Hans Knudsen : O. E. Hasse. Rembrandt Publishing House, 1960.

Web links

Commons : Otto Eduard Hasse  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Helmut Heiber (editor): files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1992, pp. 630-631. ISBN 3-486-50181-X .
  2. Bärbel Schrader: "Revocable at any time" - the Reich Chamber of Culture and the special permits in theater and film of the Nazi state . Metropol, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-938690-70-3 .
  3. ^ O. E. Hasse archive inventory overview on the website of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.