Willy Maertens

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Wilhelm Hermann August Maertens (born October 30, 1893 in Braunschweig , † November 28, 1967 in Hamburg ) was a German actor , theater director , theater director and acting teacher.

Life

Willy Maertens, who was born in Braunschweig, turned to acting at an early age. Before the First World War he began his career in Berlin , where he received his acting training. Then he came to Nuremberg ("Intimate Theater"). This was followed by an engagement at the Salzgitter summer theater . The other stations before his conscription to the military and thus to the war effort were Sondershausen , Rudolstadt and Arnstadt in Thuringia . After the end of the war, the other stations were Wismar , Bromberg , Elbing , Salzbrunn from 1918, Hanover , Saarbrücken and Braunschweig .

In 1927 he went to Hamburg to the Thalia Theater there . There he worked exclusively as an actor for 12 years, from 1939 also often as a director. When the theater was destroyed by bombing in 1945, he took over the management of the house from Robert Meyn . A year later, the venue was provisionally reopened with What you want by William Shakespeare . On December 3, 1960, the fully restored building opened with the play St. Joan by George Bernard Shaw . In addition, the versatile artist also worked as an acting teacher. His students included, for example, Manfred Steffen and the Ohnsorg actors Karl-Heinz Kreienbaum and Heinz Lanker . In 1964 Maertens handed over the management of the house to Kurt Raeck .

The most famous leading roles he played on stage included:

After the Second World War, his career began in film and later also in television. Before that, he only played a supporting role in the film Attack on Baku in 1940/1941 . He embodied leading roles in Arche Nora (1948), Just One Night (1950), Under the Thousand Laterns (The Voice of the Other) (1952), Biedermann and the Brandstifter (1958) or The Robbery of the Sabine Women (1959). He was also seen in many larger and smaller supporting roles in popular films, such as the episode film In those days (1947), No fear of large animals (1953), The captain of Köpenick (1956) or Night fell over Gotenhafen (1959).

In what was probably the first radio play produced after the war, Maertens played the title role of Captain von Köpenick . The first broadcast took place on September 3, 1945 on what was then Radio Hamburg. In this medium he played leading roles more often than in film and television. He is also said to have worked as a voice actor in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Senate awarded him the Medal for Art and Science of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 1967 .

Gravestone in
the women's garden

Willy Maertens was married to his colleague Charlotte Kramm (1900–1971). Like her husband, she was a member of the Thalia Theater from 1932 until her death. However, because of her Jewish descent, she was banned from performing during the Nazi era . She survived the Holocaust because the President of the Reich Theater Chamber, who was friends with the couple, marked Mrs. Kramm's “Aryan” descent with the note “Already done”. The son Peter Maertens (1931-2020) was like his parents an actor and was also engaged at the Thalia Theater. The grandchildren Michael , Kai and Miriam Maertens also work as actors.

Willy Maertens died on November 28, 1967 in Hamburg and, like his wife four years later, was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery. The tomb has since been closed, but the tombstone has been put back in the women's garden .

Filmography

Radio plays

literature

  • Ernst August Greven: 110 years Thalia-Theater Hamburg 1843–1953. A little chronicle. Edited by artistic director Willy Maertens. Compiled by Albert Dambek. Hamburg 1953.
  • Willy Maertens. 25 years at the Thalia Theater. In: The Freeport. Season 1952/53, issue 4. Kayser, Hamburg 1952/1953.

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