Walter Franck

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Walter Franck as Macbeth in the Hebbel Theater in Berlin (1945)

Walter Franck (born April 16, 1896 in Hüttensteinach , Duchy of Saxony-Meiningen ; † August 10, 1961 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , Free State of Bavaria ) was a German stage and film actor .

Life

In 1916 he graduated from the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich .

He studied at the request of his father philosophy , but secretly took from 1914 to 1916 when Albert Steinrück acting lessons. In 1916 he made his debut in a production by Steinrück at a Munich student theater. He received his first engagement in 1916/17 at the Munich Court Theater . His next stops were Nuremberg (1917/18), Frankfurt am Main (1918/19) and the Lobe Theater in Breslau (1919–1921).

Leopold Jeßner brought him to the State Theater in Berlin in 1923 . From 1924 to 1927 he was engaged at the Deutsches Theater , where he stood out in 1924 as George Garga in Brecht's Im Thicket of Cities and as Grand in the world premiere of Bronnen's Anarchy in Sillian . Herbert Ihering wrote on April 7, 1924 in the Berlin Börsen-Courier : "The performance was under the spell of the phenomenal performance of Walter Franck as Grand."

He then returned to the State Theater, where he took on many leading roles until 1944. He was seen in the title role of captain Florian Geyer (1927) and that of Woyzeck (1927), billionaire son in Kaisers Gas I (1928, Schiller Theater ), Brackenburg in Egmont (1928), Kreon in King Oedipus (1929), Scott in Goerings The South Pole expedition of Captain Scott (1930), Brutus in Julius Caesar (1930), Octavio in Wallenstein (1931), Karl in Die Räuber (1932), as Faust in Faust II (1933), Friedeborn in Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (1937) , Edward IV. In Richard III. (1938), Cassius in Julius Caesar (1941) and Archduke Matthias in Grillparzer's A Brotherly Quarrel in the House of Habsburg (1942).

In 1926 he took part in his only silent film The Adventures of a Ten-Mark Note , and in 1927 he became a teacher for role studies at the State Drama School in Berlin. At the age of 38 he turned back to film in 1934, where he mostly took on minor character roles. In the historical film Bismarck he was in 1940 as the French Emperor Napoleon III. to see.

After the war he worked at the Hebbel Theater and the Renaissance Theater in Berlin. Among other things, he played Jean in Strindberg's Miss Julie (1946). Guest performances have taken him to Hamburg, Munich and the Ruhr Festival in Recklinghausen . From 1952 he worked at the Schillertheater and at the Schlossparktheater . He played, among others, Philipp in Bruckner's Elisabeth von England (1953), Caesar in Shaws Caesar and Cleopatra (1955), Philipp in Don Carlos (1955) and Krapp in Samuel Beckett's The Last Volume (1959).

In 1953 Franck received the Federal Cross of Merit (Steckkreuz) and in 1956 the Great Cross of Merit, in 1955 the Berlin Art Prize and in 1961 the German Critics' Prize . He was a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts . After his death, which overtook him on a vacation trip to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Friedrich Luft wrote about him in Theater heute , Issue 9: “Walter Franck seemed to be made to play all evildoers, all well poisoners, all Schubjaks and devils of great world literature. And he pretty much played them all - and he played them terrific. "

Walter Franck is buried in the Garmisch cemetery in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Filmography

Radio plays

Web links

Commons : Walter Franck  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. April 18, 1896 is often given as the date of birth, while rororo's theater lexicon is April 16, 1886.
  2. ^ Annual report on the K. Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich. ZDB ID 12448436 , 1915/16