Werner Peters (actor)

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Werner Peters in his role as Diederich Heßling in the DEFA film Der Untertan ; Movie poster from 1951, exhibited in the House of History in Bonn

Werner Peters (born July 7, 1918 in Werlitzsch , † March 30, 1971 in Wiesbaden ) was a German theater and film actor and voice actor .

In his best-known role, he portrayed the opportunistic protagonist Diederich Heßling in the DEFA film classic Der Untertan in 1951 - a film adaptation of Heinrich Mann 's novel of the same name .

Life

Werner Peters was the son of the businessman Roland Peters and his wife Ida, nee Höhne. He attended secondary school in Leipzig and between 1935 and 1937 received acting lessons from Lina Carstens at the Alten Theater . His first engagement took him to Stralsund as a young comedian at the age of eighteen . He then worked at the Old Theater in Leipzig and until 1939 at the Prussian State Theater in Mainz . Due to a theater engagement in Kassel , he was temporarily exempt from military service until 1941.

After the Second World War, Peters first worked on the stages of the city of Gera , then he was brought to the Münchner Kammerspiele by Erich Engel and in 1947 by Wolfgang Langhoff to the Kammerspiele and the German Theater in East Berlin . Peters then played his first film role in Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1947). Between 1948 and 1955 Werner Peters shot for the East German DEFA , including his most famous film, the adaptation of Heinrich Mann's novel Der Untertan (1951), directed by Wolfgang Staudte . Peters received the GDR National Prize for the role of Diederich Heßling , who crouched up and stepped down opportunistically . This type of role was to stick with Peters throughout his further film career. Staudte's film was only released in the Federal Republic of Germany in the Adenauer era in 1957, when it was only released in a version that was cut by 12 minutes. Another 30 years had to pass before it could be shown in full. Other well-known films from Peter's time at DEFA are The Beaver Fur (1949), The Story of Little Muck (1953) and Ernst Thälmann - Leader of His Class (1954).

From 1955, Peters lived first in Düsseldorf , then in West Berlin . In 1955/56 he worked at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf and from 1956 to 1958 at the Berlin Schillertheater , but the focus of his work continued to be the film. Here he first played in Hotel Adlon (1955) by Josef von Báky and in Der 20. Juli (1955) by Falk Harnack . In 1958 Werner Peters founded the dubbing studio Rondo-Film in Berlin , with which he also produced several short films for television. In the following years, Peters was a very busy actor in German and international films, mostly as a negative character in supporting roles. The best-known films include The Night When the Devil Came (1957) with Mario Adorf , The Heart of St. Pauli (1957) with Hans Albers , The Girl Rosemarie (1958) with Nadja Tiller , Der Greifer (1958) with Hansjörg Felmy . The film satire Rosen for the Public Prosecutor (1959) with Walter Giller and Martin Held brought Peters together again with director Wolfgang Staudte.

The 1960s were extremely productive for Werner Peters. Among other things, he worked in four Dr. Mabuse and Edgar Wallace films with and in the Johannes Mario Simmel film adaptation It doesn't always have to be caviar (1961). In American war and agent films, he was an opponent of stars such as Henry Fonda , James Garner and Rod Taylor . On television, Werner Peters was a guest in the series Das Kriminalmuseum and Dem Täter on the trail, among others . In addition to acting, he wrote the dialogues for Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone .

In addition, Peters found the time to lend his distinctive voice as a voice actor to various actors in international films . In the 1963 re-dubbing of the classic The Third Man , he spoke Orson Welles . He also voiced Rod Steiger , Walter Slezak , Mickey Shaughnessy , George C. Scott , Donald Pleasence , Van Heflin , Dan Duryea , Ernest Borgnine , Jack Carson and many others. Even his German colleague Friedrich Joloff (known from the Raumpatrouille series ) once had to make do with his voice, in Secret Files M (1959).

Grave of Werner Peters in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

He had been married to Ursula Burow since 1966, with whom he had a son. In his private life he was active as a marksman and in 1959 received the bronze team badge for rapid-fire pistols.

During the premiere tour for his last feature film Die Tote aus der Thames , Werner Peters suffered a heart attack in Wiesbaden at the end of March 1971 , from which he died at the age of 52. His grave is on the state's own cemetery in Heerstraße in the Westend district of Berlin (grave location: II-W13-215 / 216).

Filmography

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Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 492. Werner Peters. Short biography and photos of the grave at http://www.knerger.de/ . Retrieved November 14, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Peters, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater, film and television actor and voice actor
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Werlitzsch , Delitzsch District, Prussia (Saxony)
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1971
PLACE OF DEATH Wiesbaden