West-German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 3028. Photo: Rosemarie Clausen. Gustaf Gründgens in Das Glas Wasser/A Glass of Water (Helmut Käutner, 1960).
Gustaf Gründgens (1899-1963) was one of the most famous and influential but also controversial German actors and artistic directors of the twentieth century. He launched himself as a comet during the Weimar Republic. His most beautiful role was Mephisto, the devil in Goethe's 'Faust'. With that role he celebrated triumphs. His best-known film role was the criminal 'Der Schränker' (The Safecracker), the chief judge of Peter Lorre's character in Fritz Lang's M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder/M (1931). After 1933, Gründgens became the stage favourite of the Nazi top. Although Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels hated the homosexual Gründgens to the bone, Field Marshal Hermann Göring protected him personally. In 1946, Gründgens again acquired an important position in the German theatre. He triumphed in Berlin, amidst returned exiles and survivors from the concentration camps and was again respected as an actor.
Gustav Heinrich Arnold Gründgens was born in Düsseldorf in 1899, ten days before the turn of the century. The Gründgens family (the father descended from a Dutch family) was already in serious financial problems when Gründgens was born. The young Gustaf Gründgens volunteered for the military in 1916, immediately after secondary school, and was sent to the Westfront. In 1917 he became a member of the front theater company Saarlouis, one year later he managed this company. He completed his training at the drama school of the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf in one year, 1919-1920. A month later, he made his first appearance as a footman in Tolstoy's 'The Living Corpse'. Via smaller theatres in Halberstadt, Kiel (where he played Mephisto for the first time) and a short engagement in Berlin, Gründgens ended up in 1923 at the Kammerspiele in the second important German theatre city of those days, Hamburg. From the age of twenty-five, Gründgens had to support his parents completely on his own financially. In Hamburg, he met Klaus and Erika Mann. He directed the curious teenage fairy tale 'Anja und Esther' in which Klaus Mann and Gründgens played parts, and which was considered a scandalous performance for that time. He married Erika Mann in 1925 (or 1926 - the sources differ) and the marriage lasted three years. In a short time, Gründgens became too big for Germany's second-largest theatre city. In 1928, Max Reinhardt engaged him for the Deutsches Theater on Berlin's Schumannstrasse. Gründgens plunged into Berlin theatre life with boundless energy. He tackled everything he could get: film, revue, cabaret, big stage roles. One of his first film roles is the gangster leader 'Der Schränker' (The Safecracker) who is the chief judge of the kangaroo court presiding over Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) in Fritz Lang's timeless classic M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder/M (1931). In 1932, the Berliners see Gründgens for the first time as Mephisto in 'Faust I', in the Staatliches Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt opposite Werner Krauss in the title role. Critic Herbert Ihering wrote in the Berliner Börsen Courier (3 December 1932): 'Gründgens flashes and sparks. He plays a hundred variations on the Mephisto theme, but never the theme itself. He plays commentary on Mephisto, witty footnotes, against the Goethe exegetes.'
In 1933, after the seizure of power by Hitler et al., and the fire in the Reichstag, many artists left Germany. Thomas Mann's children call their father in Switzerland and tell him to stay there. Klaus and Erika Mann themselves started the anti-fascist cabaret Die Pfeffermühle, with which they celebrated triumphs all over Europe. Gustaf Gründgens stayed in Germany. In the summer and early autumn of 1933 Gründgens made a film in Spain. In October 1933 he returned to Berlin to play a leading role in Hermann Bahr's comedy 'Das Konzert', alongside Emmy Sonnemann, Mrs. Göring. Hermann Göring, who had become Prime Minister of Prussia, was looking for a new Intendant for the 'Preussisches Staatstheater' and his wife pointed out Gründgens' leadership qualities. Gründgens was appointed to that position for the 1934-1935 season. Joseph Goebbels was furious and contacted Hitler about Gründgens and his alleged homosexuality. Göring took the longest straw. The general dismissed the argument of Gründgens' alleged homosexuality with the sentence: 'I decide who is a fagot'. Gründgens formed a brilliant ensemble with actors like Werner Krauss, Kurt Meisel, Bernhard Minetti and Heinz Rühmann, and actresses like Marianne Hoppe and Pamela Wedekind. He also became a member of the Presidential Council of the Reichstheaterkammer (Theatre Chamber of the Reich), which was an institution of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture). In 1936, Gründgens married the famous German actress Marianne Hoppe. Despite this "lavender marriage", Gründgens was widely known as homosexual, according to Wikipedia In the 1930s Gustaf Gründgens increasingly alienated himself from his progressive circle of friends from the Weimar Republic. Klaus Mann wrote a novel about a career fighter in the Third Reich with Gründgens as a metaphor. Klaus Mann had had a short-lived relationship with Gründgens, and the novel was said to resemble an act of personal revenge. In 1936, 'Mephisto - Roman einer Karriere' was published in Amsterdam. The qualifier 'key novel' will haunt the book of Mephisto well into the 1970s. The novel remained banned in Germany until more than thirty years after the victory over the Nazis. Gründgens's adopted son and heir Peter Gorski, who had directed Faust, successfully sued the publisher on his late father's behalf in 1966. The judgment was upheld by the Federal Court of Justice in 1968. In the time-consuming lawsuit, the controversy over libel and the freedom of fiction from censorship was finally decided by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1971. It ruled that Gründgens's post-mortem personality rights prevailed and upheld the prohibition imposed on the publisher. However, the novel met with no further protests when it was published again in 1981 by Rowohlt. The novel was made into the film Mephisto (István Szabó, 1981), with Klaus Maria Brandauer in the role of Hendrik Höfgen. The film was a huge commercial and critical success and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1981.
Loek Zonneveld wrote in a 1995 article in the Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer: "Of course Gründgens' overt flirtations with the barbarians are unpalatable. And of course, it is quite wrong that through his theatre he provided the Nazis with an aesthetically and artistically sound civilizational alibi, as it were. But that is why Gründgens' argument (to continue to prevent worse and to help individuals) cannot simply be thrown into the trash by means of the tight right/wrong scheme. First of all: Gründgens has helped, supported, and rescued people from the hands of the Nazi executioners. When the anti-Semitic paper Der Stürmer by Julius Streicher starts a smear campaign in September 1934 against the 'verjudung' of the theatre in Gründgens' birthplace Düsseldorf, in particular by attacking the actress Louise Dumont (wife of his former teacher Lindemann), the Intendant writes an open letter to Streicher's obscure paper. In the same year, the theatre critic Alfred Mühr tackles Gründgens' theater mercilessly. Göring feels addressed and proposes to his Intendant to send the critic to a concentration camp 'for a short vacation'. Gründgens replies: 'Unfortunately that is not possible. I have engaged him to your theater today, as a dramaturge.' When his old chief from Hamburg, Erich Ziegel, is caught by the Nazis, Gründgens takes him to Berlin and saves him from the clutches of the Hamburg Gestapo. The most famous man who survived Gründgens is Ernst Busch, the communist singer/actor. Busch barely disappears to a concentration camp in 1943, on the intercession of the Intendant, who recruits (and pays for) the best lawyers for Busch. It takes courage to defend a communist in the year the Nazis suffer their first major defeat at Stalingrad."
During the 1930s, Gustaf Gründgens had a second successful career in German cinema. He specialised on-screen in portraying icy intellectuals, cynical snobs, villains, and bon vivants, and appeared in such hits as Liebelei/Flirtation (Max Ophüls, 1933) starring Magda Schneider. and Der Tunnel/The Tunnel (Kurt Bernhardt, 1933) with Paul Hartmann. Another hit was Pygmalion (Erich Engel), 1935) in which he played Professor Higgins opposite Jenny Jugo as Elisa Doolittle. Gründgens tried to keep away from the 'Propaganda and amusement rubbish' in the UFA films. In 1938, he formed his own production company at Terra Filmkunst. For quite some time he managed to fend off the Nazi culture bosses, but in 1941 he was forced to take part in Ohm Krüger/Uncle Krüger (Hans Steinmhoff, 1941), starring Emil Jannings. This propaganda film claimed that the British invented the phenomenon of 'concentration camp' in South Africa. He also acted in the historical drama Friedemann Bach (Traugott Müller, 1941), a film he also produced. The film depicts the life of Johann Sebastian Bach's son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (Gründgens), who is shown as a gifted son trying to escape his father's (Eugen Klöpfer) shadow. When the pressure from Goebbels became too much for him, Gründgens enlisted in the Wehrmacht in 1944, and he ended up in a Russian internment camp in 1945. On the intercession of Ernst Busch, he was released after nine months. In 1946, he played again, on the stages of the Deutsches Theater on Berlin's Schumannstrasse in 'Der Snob' by Carl Sternheim in the role of an opportunist. Klaus Mann - in the uniform of a US army correspondent - sat in the front row. He became again the undisputed darling of the Berlin theatre. In 1946, Gustaf Gründgens was in dramatically bad health. For years, he had been keeping himself going with painkillers and sleeping pills, and he is heavily addicted to morphine. Yet he became an Intendant twice: first in Düsseldorf and from 1955 in Hamburg. There he staged his last 'Faust' in 1957 and played Mephisto one more time. The lines at the cash register were front-page news one more time. In 1960, the film Faust (Peter Gorski, 1960) was adapted from this theater production at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus with Will Quadflieg as Faust. Gründgens' last role was Phillips II in Schiller's 'Don Carlos', in 1962. In the summer of 1963, he gave his last television interview on the ZDF, in which he said 'For the past thirty years I have played roles all the time, I have forgotten to live.' In September 1963 Gründgens left for a world tour. On 7 October 1963, Gustaf Gründgens died lonely in a hotel room in Manila, Philippines, of an internal hemorrhage. He was 63. It has never been ascertained whether or not he committed suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills. His last words, written on an envelope, were, "I believe that I took too many sleeping pills. I feel a little funny or strange. Let me sleep long." He is buried at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg.
Sources: Loek Zonneveld (Dutch), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3597/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Bavaria Filmkunst. Siegfried Breuer in Anuschka (Helmut Käutner, 1942).
Austrian stage actor Siegfried Breuer (1906-1954) made his film debut at 33. In the next 15 years, he starred as a charming bon vivant in 50 films, including many Viennese comedies, some Nazi propaganda, and the classic The Third Man (1949). Breuer was also an occasional film director and screenwriter.
Siegfried Breuer was born in Vienna, Austria in 1906 – 1 February 1954, Weende, Göttingen). He was the son of the German actor and opera singer Hans Breuer. His godfather was Siegfried Wagner. So performing was in young Siegfried’s blood and in the early 1920s, he studied at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he studied alongside Paula Wessely and Käthe Gold. In 1924, he made his stage debut at the Volkstheater in Vienna. He performed his first leading role in The Prince of Homburg under the direction of Max Reinhardt in Berlin. In 1935 he became a member of the ensemble cast of the prestigious Deutsches Theater. After some 15 years of stage acting the then 33 years old Siegfried Breuer made his screen debut in the short Eins zu Eins/One to One (Carl Prucker, 1939). He was immediately much in demand , and that same year, he added his Viennese charm to Unsterblicher Walzer/Immortal Waltz (E.W. Emo, 1939) with Paul Hörbiger as Johann Strauss, Mutterliebe/Mother Love (Gustav Ucicky, 1939), the comedy Anton, der Letzte/Anthony the Last (E.W. Emo, 1939) with Hans Moser, and the Anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film Leinen aus Irland/Linen for Ireland (Heinz Helbig, 1939). During the war years, Breuer played an elegant but sinister seducer in the Alexander Pushkin adaptation Der Postmeister/The postmaster (Gustav Ucicky, 1940) with Heinrich George and Hilde Krahl, and in the classic Romanze in Moll/Romance in Moll (Helmut Käutner, 1943) with Marianne Hoppe. But he also served the stereotype of the evil Jew in such anti-Semitic productions as Der Weg ins Freie/The way out (Rolf Hansen, 1941) starring Zarah Leander, and Venus vor Gericht/Venus in court (Hans H. Zerlett, 1941) with Hannes Stelzer.
Between 1939 and 1954, Siegfried Breuer would star in 50 films. After the war, he was seen in a supporting part in the film adaptation in colour of the operetta Die Fledermaus/The Bat (Géza von Bolváry, 1946) with Marte Harell and Johannes Heesters. The film was already shot in 1944, but the film material seemed lost after the bombings. In 1946, the material was found and finally edited. One of the most famous films in which Breuer appeared is the British Film Noir The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949), situated in allied-occupied Vienna. Breuer played Popescu, one of the Austrian black marketers and friends of the mysteriously killed Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Popescu was a small part but one which is integral to the development of the story. Another success was the come-back film of Zarah Leander, the musical drama Gabriela (Géza von Cziffra, 1950). Leander West German musical drama film directed by and co-starring Carl Raddatz, Vera Molnar, and Breuer. In 1943 when the Nazi leadership had demanded she take German citizenship, she had broken her contract with Ufa and returned to her native Sweden. In the immediate post-war era, she was banned from appearing in German films because of her previous association with the Nazi hierarchy. From 1949 she was able to make films once more. Gabriela was the third highest-grossing film at the West German box office in 1950. Breuer directed, wrote and starred in the film Der Schuß durchs Fenster/The shot through the window (Siegfried Breuer, 1950) in which he worked with Curd Jurgens. He also directed the comedies Seitensprünge im Schnee/Escapades in the Snow (Siegfried Breuer, 1950) with Doris Kirchner, and In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus/ In Munich stands a Hofbräuhaus (Siegfried Breuer, 1951) with Fita Benkhoff and Paul Kemp. Siegfried Breuer was a heavy smoker. He died in 1954 in Weende near Göttingen in the South of Germany. He was only 47. Breuer was married six times, among others with the actresses Maria Andergast, Eva-Maria Meineke and Lia Condrus. His sons Siegfried Breuer Jr and Pascal Breuer and his grandchildren Jacques Breuer and Pascal Breuer are also in the entertainment industry.
Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.
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German collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Die Letzte Brücke/The Last Bridge (Helmut Käutner, 1954).
Handsome Austrian film actor Carl Möhner (1921–2005) appeared in over 40 films between 1949 and 1976, including the French gangster classic Du rififi chez les hommes/Rififi (1955).
Pretty, wide-eyed Austrian leading lady Maria Schell (1926-2005) became one of the first film idols to the European postwar generation. With her ‘smile under tears’ she appeared in dozens of German and Austrian popular films, but she also starred in British, French, Italian, and Hollywood productions.
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Tags: Maria Schell Maria Schell Austrian Actress Austria Carl Möhner Carl Möhner Moehner Actor 1950s European Film Star Movie Star Film Cinema Kino Cine Picture Screen Movie Movies Filmster Star Vintage Postcard Cartolina Carte Postale Tarjet Postal Postkarte Postkaart Briefkarte Briefkaart Ansichtskarte Ansichtkaart Die Letzte Brücke 1954 Helmut Käutner Helmut Käutner
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German postcard by Photo-Kitt, München, no. 504. Photo: Kurt Julius / Camera Film.
Helmut Käutner (1908-1980) was one of the most influential and acclaimed directors of the German post-war cinema and he was known for his sophisticated literary film adaptations. He already began his career as an actor and cabaret artist at the end of the Weimar Republic and he directed his first major films in Nazi Germany.
Paul Günther Helmut Käutner was born in 1908 in Düsseldorf, Germany. He was the son of merchant Paul Läutner and his wife Claire, born Röntgen. In 1916, the family moved to Essen where Käutner attended Helmholtz-Realgymnasium and participated in school theatre performances. He studied graphics, costume design, set design, and interior design at the Kunstgewerbeschule. In 1928, he went to Munich's university to study German studies, philosophy, psychology, art history, and theatre studies. From 1931 to 1935 he wrote, directed and performed at the Munich Student Cabaret troupe Die vier Nachrichter (The Four Executioners). The literary and rather unpolitical group was banned in 1935 for "lack of reliability and aptitude according to national socialist governance". Käutner wrote feuilletons and reviews for the Bavarian university newspaper. In 1932, he made his film debut as an actor in Kreuzer Emden/Cruiser Emden (Louis Ralph, 1932), but after that experience he turned to the theatre again and also wrote songs. From 1936 to 1938 he worked as an actor and director at the Schauspielhaus in Leipzig, at the Kammerspielen in Munich, at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, at the Komödie and at the Kabarett der Komiker in Berlin. In 1938 he drew attention to himself as a screenwriter for such films as Schneider Wibbel/Wibbel the Tailor (Victor de Kowa, 1938), Salonwagen E 417 (Paul Verhoeven, 1938), Die Stimme aus dem Äther (Harald Paulsen, 1938) and Marguerite: 3 (Theo Lingen, 1938). In 1939 began his career as a film director with the light-hearted comedy Kitty und die Weltkonferenz/Kitty and the World Conference (1939), featuring Hannelore Schroth. Käutner was not a member of the resistance but, during the period of National Socialism, he was able to maintain a certain independence in his work. Kitty and the World Conference was withdrawn by the Nazi censors due to its “pro-English tendencies”. Käutner rejected the UFA filmmaking establishment and produced thoughtful and poetic works like Kleider machen Leute/Clothes Make the Man (1940) starring Heinz Rühmann, Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska!/Goodbye, Franziska! (1941), and Romanze in Moll/Romance in a Minor Key (1943) starring Marianne Hoppe and Paul Dahlke. The latter was often seen as Käutner’s best film of this period. Romanze in Moll is an adaptation of Guy du Maupassant’s short story Les Bijoux. A somewhat traditional love-triangle story, the film was praised for its compositional perfection and technical virtuosity. Käutner’sfilms considered the struggles of the German people during a period of great turmoil. With Große Freiheit Nr. 7/Great Freedom No. 7 (1944) with Hans Albers, and Unter den Brücken/Unter the Bridges (1945) with Hannelore Schroth and Carl Raddatz, he created two films which, in their emphasis on the individual, strongly opposed the world view of the national socialists. Käutner’s work was noted for its more humanistic depiction of daily life than his contemporaries. Große Freiheit Nr. 7 is a melancholy, bittersweet story of disappointed love set amongst the sailors' clubs and bars of the Hamburg waterfront. The film title, which refers to a street next to Hamburg's Reeperbahn road in the St. Pauli red light district, caused a furor among the Nazis who feared that audiences would misinterpret the film’s meaning. As a result, the film was banned in Germany until the fall of the Third Reich. Unter den Brücken, which is set amongst the bargees of the River Havel, is now considered one of the greatest love stories in the history of German cinema. Käutner’s avoidance of overt political content in his films during the war, allowed him to continue his career unhindered after 1945.
In 1947 Helmut Käutner’s made the first German film after WWII, the Trümmerfilm In jenen Tagen/In Those Days (1947) with Gert E. Schäfer, Erich Schellow and Winnie Markus. The film which describes the post-war reality and people overwhelmed and traumatized by the impact of fascism, was a great success and launched the new German film. Käutner used the framing device of an automobile whose various owners serve as the film’s protagonists and initiate its episodic structure. In the next years he directed such films such as Der Apfel ist ab /The Original Sin (1948) and Königskinder/Royal Children (1950). He was acclaimed for these socially conscious, often starkly realistic post-war films, which depicted the plight of the common man, struggling with the traumatic effects of the war and its aftermath. However, the films were no audience successes. In 1954, he won the Prix International at the Cannes film festival for his stark, realistic anti-war drama Die letzte Brücke/The Last Bridge (1954). In the following years, he had great successes with Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Konigs,(1955) and the Carl Zuckmayer adaptations Des Teufels General/The Devil’s General (1954), with Curd Jürgens, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick/The Captain from Kopenick (1956) with Heinz Rühmann and Der Schinderhannes (1958), again with Curd Jürgens. In 1956, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 29th Academy Awards. Another international success was Monpti/Love from Paris (1957) , starring Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz. Käutner moved to Hollywood and produced two films for Universal: the family melodrama The Restless Years (1958) and A Stranger in My Arms (1959), with Charles Coburn and Sandra Dee. He soon returned to West-Germany and made Der Rest ist Schweigen/The Rest Is Silence (1959), a modern-day retelling of Hamlet, starring Hardy Krüger. He did not feel a connection with the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962 or the New German Cinema, and Käutner distanced himself more and more from the cinema. His final feature films were Das Haus in Montevideo/The House in Montevideo (1963) with Heinz Rühmann and Ruth Leuwerik, Lausbubengeschichten/Tales of a Young Scamp (1964) and the remake of Der Feuerzangenbowle/The Fire Tongue Bowl (1970), with Walter Giller and Uschi Glas. He began to work for television and occasionally he appeared as an actor. In addition, he also increasingly directed for the theatre. In 1967, he received the Adolf-Grimme-Preis for his television production of Valentin Katayev, produced at the Saarland Radio, surgical interventions in the soul life of Dr. Igor Igorowitsch . In 1974 he played the title role in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's feature film Karl May. Helmut Käutner also worked for radio Hamburg. Since 1934, he had been married to the actress Erica Balqué who later was assistant director for almost all his films. His last years of life, already seriously ill, he spent with his wife in Tuscany in his house in Castellina in Chianti, in the north of the province of Siena. There he died in 1980 at the age of 72.
Sources: Julian Petley (Film Reference), Filmportal.de, Harvard Film Archive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.
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Dutch postcard by Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3179. Photo still with Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti/Love from Paris (Helmut Käutner, 1957).
Monpti (1957) is a cheerful, yet melancholic love story set in Paris that ends tragically: In 1957 Horst Buchholz and Romy Scheider were Germany's biggest film stars. They had teamed up the year before in Robinson Soll nicht sterben which dealt with Daniel Defoe's childhood. Horst Buchholz had also been the hero of the German version of Julien Duvivier's Marianne de Ma Jeunesse.The young and fascinating Romy grew in popularity in the wake of the Sissi saga. Monpti (English-language title Love From Paris) was the first time she had left the costume- and Heimatfilms. Monpti was the turning point which explained her further evolution. It was not yet Orson Welles or Luchino Visconti but it was a step in the right direction. Montpi was directed by Helmut Käutner and produced by Harald Braun. It was filmed in the Bavaria Filmtudios and on location in Paris. The scenes often take place in the Luxembourg gardens in the Latin Quarter. Helmut Kautner was influenced by the French director Julien Duvivier whose Sous le Ciel de Paris (and other films) revolved around the whims of fate, with a voice over. Monpti is narrated by a wry, all-knowing Parisian, played by director Käutner himself.
Romy Schneider plays Anne-Claire, a pretty 17-year old seamstress, who pretends to be wealthy in order to crash society. In this guise, she meets and falls in love with a young starving artist from Budapest (Horst Buchholz) whom she calls Monpti (short for Mon petit – My little one). She tells him that she comes from a wealthy family and has a private chauffeur, and even takes Monpti to a family church funeral and points out all her relatives, even telling which ones are not on speaking terms. Monpti has no time for women of wealth. Sensing a challenge, Anne-Claire pursues Monpti, keeping her true identity a secret. But when he learns the truth, he hits her in the open street, takes a cab, and drives away. What starts as a light-hearted romp unexpectedly deepens into tragedy.Anne-Claire tries to follow him but runs into a car. In the background of many scenes we have seen the couple who overrun Anne-Claire, and their shallow emotions were recurrently contrasted with the genuine love of the young couple.Monpti sees Anne-Claire one last time, in the hospital, but then he is alone again. In a dream, he sees her in a wedding dress.
Sources: Hal Erickson (All Movie Guide), DB du Monteil (IMDb), Max Schamberg (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
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