Tonio Selwart

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Tonio Selwart, photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1933

Tonio Selwart (born June 9, 1896 in Wartenberg , Bavaria as Anton Theodor Selmair ; † November 2, 2002 in New York , United States ) was a German-Austrian actor who settled in the United States and became a US citizen in 1938.

Live and act

Selmair came from a family that had worked in the medical profession for several generations ; his father Dr. Anton Selmair ran a sanatorium in Munich . After his military service during the First World War, Selmair junior also studied medicine for a few semesters in Vienna and Munich in the Austro-Hungarian army , but finally decided to take up acting. He received classical acting lessons from Gustav Waldau and in Vienna and started his artistic career at the age of 23 after graduating from drama school.

From 1919 he mainly toured (to the Bavarian province, but also to Munich to the Bavarian State Theater in 1929), occasionally Selwart also received permanent engagements (e.g. at the city theater in St. Gallen, Switzerland 1930/31). Among his best-known roles are the Prince of Homburg in the Kleist play of the same name . In 1932 he went on a tour to the USA, where he first attracted attention in October 1932 with his New York appearances in the productions of Liliom and The Lady of the Camellias . He was married to Claire Volkhart , a painter and wax boss, born in Düsseldorf in 1886, who died there in 1935.

When Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933, Selwart decided to stay in the US and continued his stage career in New York. Until the late 1950s he was seen in such diverse productions as The Pursuit of Happiness , The Laughing Woman , Flight Into China , Russian Bank , Candle in the Wind , Temper the Wind , The Hidden River , Lute Song and And the Wind Blows .

In the middle of World War II, offers from Hollywood were added. Since his debut in 1942 as Prague Gestapo chief Haas in Fritz Lang's resistance drama about the murder of Reinhard Heydrich , Die Henker too , he was entrusted with a number of heavily clichéd roles - mainly Nazis and Wehrmacht uniforms - until shortly before the end of the war. Selwart played Major Brühl in The Cross of Lorraine , was the anti-Semitic Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg (whom Selwart had met personally in the 1920s) in The Hitler Gang , but also gave an imaginary UN President in Peter Ustinov's East-West Satire Romanoff and Julia , headed Aranda as council president in Die nackte Maja Kastilien and tried in the politician biography Wilson as Kaiser Wilhelm's ambassador in Washington 1917 to prevent the USA from entering the war against Germany. With the part of the aged General von Mackensen in the Italian war film Battle for Anzio , his last completed film work , Tonio Selwart achieved his highest military rank in the cinema.

After the Second World War, Tonio Selwart, who was well known to Thomas Mann's family , also took part in television productions (series Zorro and some guest appearances). Selwart died of pneumonia at the age of 106 in Manhattan, his adopted home for seven decades. He was buried in the family grave in Wartenberg.

Filmography

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ GND: Claire Selmair; Claire Volkhart (maiden name)
  2. ^ Wiener Zeitung Online: A New Yorker by choice - Tonio Selwart died at the age of 106. In: wienerzeitung.at. November 5, 2002, accessed March 14, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Selwart, Tonio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Anton Theodor Selmair
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Wartenberg (Upper Bavaria)
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 2002
Place of death New York City