Werner Krauss (actor)

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Werner Krauss around 1920 on a photograph by Alexander Binder

Werner Johannes Krauss (born June 23, 1884 in Gestungshausen near Coburg , † October 20, 1959 in Vienna ) was a German actor . He was considered a charismatic genius and the greatest actor of his time with an incredible ability to transform, but was an anti-Semite and very controversial as a person due to his proximity to National Socialism.

Life

Birthplace in Gestungshausen
Memorial plaque for Werner Krauss in Vienna-Alsergrund

Werner Johannes Krauss was born on June 23, 1884 in the rectory in Gestungshausen, where his grandfather was the pastor. The son of the post office clerk Paul Krauss and his wife Karoline, nee Wust, spent most of his childhood and youth in Breslau . From 1898 he attended the Protestant preparatory institute in Breslau and from 1901 the teachers' college in Kreuzburg in Upper Silesia .

Because of his appearances as an extra at the Breslau Lobe Theater , he was suspended from classes in 1902. He decided to become an actor and got his first role at the Wagner traveling theater in Breslau. In 1903 he made his debut at the Stadttheater von Guben . Without training, he initially had to be content with small tasks at traveling stages, followed by appearances at the city theaters of Magdeburg and Bromberg (1905/06). From 1907 to 1910 he worked at the Aachen Theater, from 1910 to 1912 in Nuremberg , and from 1912/13 at the Munich Art Theater.

Recommended by Alexander Moissi , Max Reinhardt engaged him in 1913 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin . At first only employed as a second cast or in smaller roles (Lindekuh in Frank Wedekind's Music 1913, King Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet , 1913, Mephisto in Goethe's Faust 1913, Franz Moor in Schiller's Die Räuber 1914), he quickly played his way forward. In 1915 he was called up, but after three months of service as a sea ​​cadet in Kiel he was dismissed.

After the end of the First World War, Werner Krauss rose to become an admired theater and film star. He embodied the great characters of the theater like Hamlet or Wallenstein , but his specialty was the depiction of darklings like Mephisto , Franz Moor in The Robbers , Iago in Othello or Shylock . In 1922 he played in August Strindberg's Ein Traumspiel , the dean, the quarantine master, the coal bearer, the police officer and the magister. From 1924 to 1926 he was engaged at the State Theater , 1926 to 1931 at the Deutsches Theater and 1928/29 at the Burgtheater and again at the State Theater from 1931 to 1933.

In the early 1930s Werner Krauss played roles in two world premieres at the Deutsches Theater Berlin that became his most successful: the shoemaker Wilhelm Voigt in the world premiere of Der Hauptmann von Köpenick in the play by Carl Zuckmayer at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin (1931, directed by Heinz Hilpert ) and Matthias Clausen in Gerhart Hauptmann's Before Sunset (directed by Max Reinhardt). In September / October 1933 Krauss made a guest appearance with Before Sunset in London (in English). Werner Krauss appeared on various stages as Bruno Mechelke in Gerhart Hauptmann's Die Ratten and was also seen as Babberley in Charley's Aunt . Until 1938 guest performances regularly took him to America, where he could be seen on the New York stage, around 1924 in Max Reinhardt's production of Karl Gustav Vollmoeller's pantomime Das Mirakel .

In January 1933 Krauss took up an engagement at the Burgtheater in Vienna. One of his first roles was Napoleon in A Hundred Days by Benito Mussolini and Giovacchino Forzano (whom he also played in the film in 1934), after which he was received by the 'Duce'. Shortly afterwards there was a meeting with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , who appointed him deputy president of the Reichstheaterkammer , and he and Hitler established Werner Krauss as important cultural representatives of the Nazi regime.

In 1937, at the Salzburg Festival, the last collaboration with the Jewish director Max Reinhardt took place, in whose Faust production at the Felsenreitschule Krauss played Mephisto. In Salzburg, Krauss had already played death at Reinhardt's Jedermann on Domplatz (in 1949 he played the devil there). On June 15, 1937 Krauss played at the Schauspielhaus the premiere of Goya -Dramas genius without a people of Viktor Warsitz for "4. Reichstheaterwoche ”directed by Walter Bruno Iltz .

Werner Krauss was considered one of the outstanding actors of his time. Elisabeth Bergner called him the “greatest actor of all time” and “demonic genius”. The critic Siegfried Jacobsohn wrote in 1924: “In front of this wealth of imagination one remains blinded and carried away”, and Max Reinhardt described Krauss as an actor “with a strangely communicative autosuggestive power. You are held on by an invisible force, physically touched. The theater fills his face. "

Friedrich Weissensteiner wrote: “Werner Krauss possessed a tremendous power of suggestion, he was an enchanter, a magician who could cast a spell over the audience and hypnotize them. To portray a character or to illuminate a situation at lightning speed, he just had to be there. " Marcel Reich-Ranicki in his autobiography Mein Leben :" When Gründgens appeared on the stage, he immediately began to act: from his looks and movements, words and phrases, sudden pauses and unexpected accelerations then resulted in a wonderfully suggestive and original figure. When Krauss came on stage, the character he was playing was there immediately - without his having said or done anything. "

When asked why he became an actor, Krauss replied: "In order not to be me"; He described his acting as follows: “I have to hear it fiddle behind me like death when I play. I repeat this second voice behind my ear. But when I feel the slightest fluctuation between the sound of the violin and my melody and my rhythm, then I know that I have no control over myself, that my strings are not taut and that I am not in tune. "

The actor Oskar Werner , who was actually called Blussmayer, called himself Oskar Werner out of admiration for his stage idol Werner Krauss.

Movie

Since Werner Krauss was only employed by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin as a second cast or in smaller roles, he turned to film in early 1916. After his debut as a dapertutto in Hoffmann's Stories by Richard Oswald , it was primarily the popular genres of trivial films , melodramas , detective stories, and moral and educational films in which he participated. Mostly he played degenerate villains: a sadist with boots and whip in Dida Ibsen's story (1918), a Chinese drug dealer in opium (1919) or a murderous cripple in the dance of death (1919). In 1918 he starred in The Diary of a Lost One (director: Richard Oswald).

Werner Krauss achieved his international breakthrough in 1920 with the legendary silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (director: Robert Wiene ), where he, at the side of Conrad Veidt in facial expressions and body language, was completely absorbed in the portrayal of the showman / mad doctor Caligari, who embodied authority and subordination in one. The epoch of German film of the 1920s, summarized by Lotte H. Eisner under the term "The Demonic Screen", subsequently found one of its most important actors in Krauss. The silent film enabled him to express his ability to totally identify with the roles, his desire to transform and his ability to work through physical presence alone.

" Woman's Crusade ";
with Conrad Veidt , Harry Liedtke , Maly Delschaft a . a .; Film poster 1926 by Lipót Sátori in Georg Pollak's studio

Also in 1920 Krauss played the cook in Carl Froelich's Die Brüder Karamasoff after Fyodor Dostojewskij , a year later Robespierre in Dimitri Buchowetzki's Danton , and in 1921 Lord William Hamilton in Richard Oswald's Lady Hamilton . Krauss personally highlighted the work with Lupu Pick on the Kammerspiel Shards (1921), where he delivered the dull, depressive study of a railroad man who becomes the murderer of his daughter's seducer. In 1922 he was the Iago in Dimitri Buchowetzki's Othello based on Shakespeare and Nathan in Manfred Noa's Nathan the Wise based on GE Lessing's drama. In 1923, he played under the direction of Hans Behrendt liberal tutor in the melodrama Old Heidelberg and again with Robert Wiene INRI , where he on the side of Asta Nielsen and PORTEN the Pontius Pilate played. He was the woman murderer Jack the Ripper in Leo Birinski's Das Wachsfigurenkabinett and in Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Die joudlose Gasse at the side of Greta Garbo in 1925 the master butcher who only surrenders his supplies in exchange for love services, as well as in the psychoanalytic silent film Secrets of a Soul (1926, director : GW Pabst), in which he embodies the chemist Martin Fellmann with rich nuances, behind whose bourgeois facade hidden traumatic fears and obsessions come to light. In 1925 Krauss played the orgone in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Molière film Tartüff with Emil Jannings in the title role and in 1926 he shot with Jean Renoir Nana based on Émile Zola's 9th volume of the novel Rougon-Macquart. This was followed by the Woman's Crusade (1926, directed by Martin Berger ) and Die Hose (1927), after Carl Sternheim , as Theobald mask. In Henrik Galeen's The Student of Prague (1926) Krauss played the usurer Scapianelli and in Lupu Picks Napoleon on St. Helena (1929) Napoleon Bonaparte .

In 1932 Werner Krauss played in the Balzac film adaptation of Man without a Name (director: Gustav Ucicky ), in 1935 he was again Napoleon Bonaparte in Franz Wenzler's film adaptation of Benito Mussolini's Hundred Days . In Hans Steinhoff's Robert Koch, the fighter of death (1939) he was the opponent of Emil Jannings, who embodied the title role. In 1939 Krauss was seen in the role of a famous castle actor in Willi Forst's Burgtheater , while Hans Moser played his cloakroom. In 1940 Krauss played in Veit Harlan's anti-Semitic inflammatory film Jud Suss and was seen in the nationalist film Die Discharge (1942, director: Wolfgang Liebeneiner ) and in the title role of Georg Wilhelm Pabsts Paracelsus (1943).

time of the nationalsocialism

When Krauss was appointed German state actor in 1934 , it was clear that he was - at least artistically - involved in the Nazi regime. After the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, he was one of the signatories of the call by cultural workers for a "referendum" on the merger of the Reich President and Reich Chancellery in the person of Adolf Hitler . From 1933 to 1935 he was Deputy President of the Reich Theater Chamber . In the final phase of the Second World War , Hitler added him to the God-gifted list of the most important artists in August 1944 , which saved Krauss from being deployed in the war, including on the home front .

Above all, Werner Krauss's participation in the propaganda film Jud Suess by Veit Harlan , in which he played six Jews (all Jewish speaking roles except Joseph Suess Oppenheimer ) as "macabre proof of his versatility" (film portal ), led to a temporary ban after the second World war . In his biography of Werner Krauss, Wolff quotes A. Greinert Krauss' declaration that he had taken on all supporting roles in Jud Suss so that various actors would not overbid each other in acting out “Jewish idiosyncrasies”. In the judicial chamber proceedings in the course of the denazification after the war, Krauss emphasized that he had deliberately played in Jud Suss as cleanly as possible and tried to mitigate what was deliberately malicious and inflammatory in the script. He also feared that he would end up in a concentration camp if he had not at least played a role in Jud Suss . In the past he had openly snubbed the NSDAP several times and took a position against National Socialism. In 1947, the Spruchkammer followed this line of argument. According to the director Veit Harlan, the "deeper meaning" of this cast was to show "how all these different temperaments and characters (...) ultimately come from one root." (The film, January 20, 1940)

The writer Lion Feuchtwanger wrote: “I know Werner Krauss personally and from the stage. I would regret it if the German theaters lost this great artist. On the other hand, Werner Krauss is an extremely clever actor who creates more from the mind than from the heart. It is more than unbelievable that he should not have been aware of the effect of his portrayal of wicked types of Jews from the outset. This opinion is shared by many writers, theater people and critics living here in America who have had the opportunity to see him on stage and in life and who followed his activities during the Nazi years. "

When Krauss accepted the role in Jud Suess , the director Wolfgang Liebeneiner asked him : “Werner, why are you doing this?” “Do you know how many Jews I play in this film? Five! And everyone is different, ”replied Krauss. "But don't you know what damage you're doing with it?" "That's none of my business - I'm an actor!"

In addition to his involvement in Jud Suss , Krauss was mainly accused in the denazification proceedings of portraying Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Lothar Müthel's anti-Semitic staging in 1943 as an "anti-Semitic caricature" at the Vienna Burgtheater . Oskar Maurus Fontana wrote about this representation of Shylock by Werner Krauß :

“Werner Krauss's Shylock appears with red hair and a beard, with a single strand of white. He thinks he's looking cunning, but it's just stupidity that peers cross-eyed from the narrowed eye. So he waddles on flat feet turned outwards. But when it comes to business, money or his bills, he gets into a scurrying, hurried run with bow legs. His language is full of guttural sounds, shifts the vowels and keeps coming up with animal screeching, grunting and hissing. His lack of control of the nerves is shown in a repeated stamping of the feet and in a true St. Vitus dance of the body. His refuge in thought, which is tantamount to an admission of his impotence, is extremely cute. Then he leans his head against the wall, his legs wide apart and his back arched like a monkey. His demeanor alternates between treacherous creeping, outrageous rabidism and obsessive power madness. (...) He has no ties to his family or his religion, he is just lowliness, ugliness and stupidity (...). Werner Krauss created his Shylock ingeniously and performed it with virtuosity. A sharp laughter sweeps away the Jewish mockery. "

- Kölnische Zeitung , May 28, 1943

Gad Granach, the son of Alexander Granach , wrote: “Werner Krauss wasn't a Nazi, but he was always an angry anti-Semite (...) An actor could play Shylock in such a way that people were moved, but he could also play him that way like Werner Krauss. With him, people left the theater every evening as anti-Semites. "

Fritz Kortner judged: "A Nazi and a bastard - but a great actor."

Hans Söhnker said of Werner Krauss: “There is no discussion about the lonely rank of the artist Krauss. Opinions differ only in people. "

post war period

In 1946 Werner Krauss, who lived in Mondsee in the Salzkammergut , was expelled from Austria. In May 1948 he was classified as “less encumbered” in the third arbitration chamber proceedings and sentenced to assume the costs of the proceedings in the amount of 5,000 marks. Krauss therefore worked as a shepherd at times after the war. Krauss returned to Austria, became an Austrian citizen and again a member of the Burgtheater. In Germany he made his first post-war appearance as King Lear in July 1950 at the Ruhr Festival in Recklinghausen . On December 8, 1950, the premiere of a guest performance by the Vienna Burgtheater with Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkmann was to take place in the Berlin Theater on Kurfürstendamm. Despite heavy demonstrations by students and parts of the Jewish community, the event took place. The protesters on Kurfürstendamm were dispersed by the Berlin police.

From 1948 to 1959 Krauss worked again at the Vienna Burgtheater , of which he was a member until his death. There he played King Philip II in Schiller's Don Carlos when the Burgtheater reopened in 1955 (title role: Oskar Werner , later taken over by Heinrich Schweiger ). Together with Oskar Werner, Krauss also recorded Georg Büchner's Leonce and Lena as a radio play.

In 1951 he was given German citizenship again . In 1954 his rehabilitation reached its climax with the award of the Federal Cross of Merit. In 1954, he also received the Iffland-Ring , but not - as was otherwise tradition - from the previous bearer Albert Bassermann , who had died in 1952 (and had laid it on the coffin of the late Alexander Moissi ), but from the Kartellverband Deutschsprachiger Bühnenememberiger. According to his widow, Krauss would have wanted to leave the ring to Alma Seidler if tradition had not excluded a woman from the outset. Krauss therefore passed the ring on to Josef Meinrad (and not to his friend Oskar Werner, as was generally expected), who in turn passed on to Bruno Ganz .

On the speech plate Der alte Faust und Mephisto , which was published shortly before his death, he spoke both Goethe's Faust and Mephisto. In 1955 he recorded Socrates' defense speech based on Plato for record.

Krauss was married three times: 1908 to 1930 with Paula Saenger (son Egon, * 1913), 1931 to 1940 with the actress Maria "Migo" Bard and since 1940 with Liselotte Graf (son Gregor, * 1945).

tomb

His grave of honor is in the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 32 C, number 22).

Awards

Filmography

Radio plays

literature

  • Werner Krauss: The drama of my life. Told a friend. Introduced by Carl Zuckmayer . Published by Hans Weigel . Henry Goverts Verlag, Stuttgart 1958.
  • Rolf Badenhausen :  Krauss, Werner. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 718 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Klaus Loscher, Karl Wandrey, Franz Müller: Werner Krauss. Tragedy of a genius. Self-published by Dr. Loscher, Bayreuth 1984.
  • Herbert Ihering : Werner Krauss. An actor and the nineteenth century. Vorwerk 8, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-930916-15-0 .
  • Carl Zuckmayer: Secret report. Edited by Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-89244-599-0 , pp. 146–152.
  • Gunther Nickel, Johanna Schrön: "If you need an actor, you have to cut him off the gallows". The verdict chamber file Werner Krauss. In: Zuckmayer yearbook. Vol. 6, 2003, ISSN  1434-7865 , pp. 221-370.
  • Gunther Nickel, Johanna Schrön: Addendum. To the edition of the Werner Krauss Chamber File. In: Zuckmayer yearbook. Vol. 7, 2004, pp. 441-457.
  • Wolff A. Greinert: Werner Krauss. Actor of his time. 1884 to 1959. The biography. With a list of the theater roles. Universitas, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-8004-1489-5 .

Web links

Commons : Werner Krauss  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Elisabeth Bergner: admired a lot and scolded a lot ... Elisabeth Bergner's messy memories. Bertelsmann, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-570-01529-7 .
  2. ↑ a b c Robert Dachs : Oskar Werner. The abyss of a giant. Braumüller, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-99100-023-5 .
  3. ^ Max Huesmann: World Theater Reinhardt. Buildings, venues, stagings (= materials on 19th century art. Vol. 27). With a contribution: “Max Reinhardt's American Schedules” by Leonhard M. Fiedler. Prestel, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-7913-0510-7 .
  4. ^ Wiener Zeitung (Extra Lexikon): Playful, ingenious and demonic. Viewed on December 27, 2010 (accessed on November 22, 2013)
  5. ↑ Lotte H. Eisner : Demonic canvas. The heyday of German films. The new film, Wiesbaden-Biebrich 1955.
  6. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 336.
  7. ↑ Wolff A. Greinert: Werner Krauss. Actor in his day. 1884 to 1959. The biography. With a list of the theater roles. Universitas, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-8004-1489-5 .
  8. ^ From a letter to the Spruchkammer in Stuttgart dated March 6, 1948, State Archive Ludwigsburg EL 902/20 Bü 99791.
  9. ↑ Hilde Krahl : I almost always arrived. Memories. Recorded by Dieter H. Bratsch. Langen Müller, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7844-2704-9 .
  10. ↑ Gad Granach : Go home! From the life of a Jewish emigrant. Recorded by Hilde Recher. Ölbaum-Verlag, Augsburg 1997, ISBN 3-927217-31-X .
  11. ↑ so Leo Brawand in: Der Spiegel , 1/87, p. 49 ff.
  12. ↑ The mirror . See also the chronicle of the Free University of Berlin: "At a demonstration to which all students in Berlin were called, demonstrators break through several police chains, smash the glass doors of the theater foyer (...) and demand the cancellation of the guest performance (...) with Werner Krauss ( Krauss was the main actor in the anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß by Veit Harlan). The Berlin police are using water cannons and wooden clubs. At the request of the majority of the audience, the performance will continue. On December 11th, however, the Burgtheater canceled the guest performance after further protests. "
  13. ↑ City Councilor Mandl presented Werner Krauss with the ring of honor .
personal data
SURNAME Krauss, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krauss, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Gestungshausen
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1959
Place of death Vienna