German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 5218.

Erich Kaiser-Titz (1875-1928) was an actor in the German silent cinema of the 1910s and 1920s, playing in almost 300 films.

Erich Kaiser-Titz was born in 1875 in Berlin. Being the son of an architect, he had professional training as a metalsmith. He worked as a mason, carpenter, and foreman in construction. His first stage acting engagements had him travel all over Northern Germany: Lübeck, Kolberg, Hannover, and Bremen. In 1906 he returned to Berlin and worked at the Neue Theater, and subsequently, in 1909, 1913 and 1926 at the Deutsche Theater: as Erwin Löwenherz in 'Gelbstern', as Jack Brown in Maugham’s 'Freund Jack' (Jack Straw), as Abrezkow in Tolstoi’s 'Der lebende Leichnam' (Zhivoi Trup), as Bazaine in Werfel’s 'Juarez und Maximilian', as well as in the Sternheim comedies 'Die Sünde' and 'Bürger Schippel'. In 1911 Kaiser-Titz had his debut in film in Das gefährliche Alter (Adolf Gärtner, 1911), becoming one of the most gifted actors in German early silent film. Between 1913 and 1915, he worked for producer Oskar Messter as a partner of early German film star Henny Porten and co-acting with Rudolf Biebrach, in films often directed by Curt A. Stark and by Biebrach as well. During the First World War, the big audience knew him as the elegant detective Fox, in a series of films directed by Richard Oswald, such as the two-part film Der Fund im Neubau (Richard Oswald, 1915).

Erich Kaiser-Titz played probably his most important role in Oswald’s adaptation Hoffmanns Erzählungen (Richard Oswald, 1916), in which the actor played E. T. A. Hoffmann himself. In 1916-1917 Kaiser-Titz also played the character of Phantomas in four films of Greenbaum-Film: Ramara (1916), Die Erbe von ‘Het Steen’ (1917), Das Nachtgespräch (1917) and Die Glocken der Katharinenkirche (1918), possibly inspired by the popular Gaumont serial Fantomas. In the late 1910s Kaiser-Titz also often acted opposite the female stars of those times, such as Ellen Richter, Mady Christians, Lotte Neumann, Ressel Orla, and Hedda Vernon. He acted for instance in the intriguing Ellen Richter vehicle Das Bacchanal des Todes (Richard Eichberg, 1917), found at the Netherlands Filmmuseum some years ago. Richter here plays the dancer Lona who has the wife of painter Alexander Andrea (Kaiser-Titz) killed. The killer (Werner Krauss) threatens Lona to tell Andrea all if she doesn’t marry him, so she throws herself off a cliff. Dying in Andrea’s arms, she asks him to forgive.

In addition to these supporting parts to female stars, Erich Kaiser-Titz also starred in many films himself in the late 1910s and early 1920s. A major part was the title role in Ferdinand Lassalle (Rudolf Meinert, 1918), with Hanna Ralph and Friedrich Kühne and with a script co-scripted by E.A. Dupont. After this followed films such as the three-part film Kain (Bruno Rahn, Walther Schmidthässler, 1918), Die Frauen vom Gnadestein (Robert Dinesen, 1920-1921) costarring Margarethe Schön and co-scripted by Thea von Harbou and Joe May, the exotic detective film Peter Voss (Georg Jacoby, 1920) and its sequels Der Kaiser der Sahara (Georg Jacoby, 1920) and Gelbe Bestien (Georg Jacoby, 1920), and the two-part Das Mädel von Piccadilly (Friedrich Zelnik, 1921) with Lya Mara – actually, Kaiser-Titz and Mara did various films together in the early 1920s. Next followed a.o. the two-part Das Liebesnest (Walther Fein, 1921-1922) with Paul Wegener, Der Favorit der Königin (Franz Seitz sen., 1922) with Hanna Ralph as the queen, Wilhelm Tell (Rudolf Walther-Fein, Rudolf Dworsky, 1923) in which Kaiser-Titz was emperor Albrecht I and Conrad Veidt the hated Gessler, and Der grosse Sensationsprozess (Karl Freund, 1923), in which Kaiser-Titz starred as a lawyer, with Käthe Haack playing his wife.

In the mid-1920s, Erich Kaiser-Titz often acted opposite Lya de Putti, as in Malva (1924), Claire (1924) and Im Nahmen des Kaisers (1924-1925), all directed by Robert Dinesen. Next came parts in a.o. Die vom Niederrhein (Rudolf Walther-Fein, 1925) starring Albert Steinrück and Erna Morena, Der Mann, der sich verkauft (Hans Steinhoff, 1925) with Olaf Fjord and Vivian Gibson, Ich hatte einen Kameraden (Conrad Wiene, 1926), Hölle der Liebe (Bruno Rahn, 1926) with Vivian Gibson and William Dieterle, Was Kinder den Eltern verschweigen (Franz Osten, 1927) co-starring Olga Limburg, and Wenn die Mutter und die Tochter (Carl Boese, 1927-1928) with Trude Hesterberg – the latter meant Kaiser-Titz’s the last male lead.

In the 1920s, Erich Kaiser-Titz also played supporting parts with action heroes of the Weimar cinema such as Harry Piel, Carlo Aldini and Luciano Albertini, and even with the former American action movie hero Eddie Polo starring in a couple of German films. In the 1920s, Kaiser-Titz often played high ranked officers, aristocrats, and well-to-do men, either in male leads or supporting parts. His last supporting part was in Ungarische Rhapsodie (Hanns Schwarz, 1928) starring Dita Parlo and Willy Fritsch, apart from a part in the compilation film Rund um die Liebe (Oskar Kalbus, 1928-1929). All in all, Kaiser-Titz acted in almost 300 films, according to Wikipedia. In 1928 Erich Kaiser-Titz died in Berlin and was buried at the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf.

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.

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