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1-11 of 11
- The blond, steely-eyed bad guy of European westerns and potboilers was born in Lübeck, Germany, the son of a porcelain painter. Horst Frank financed his acting studies by working part-time as a babysitter and night watchman. He actually failed his final exams at the Musikhochschule Hamburg, but nonetheless managed to secure an acting position in his home town. For some time after, his work was primarily confined to small parts on stage and in radio. His first screen role saw him as a cowardly pilot in Der Stern von Afrika (1957). Frank then won a critic's award for his next role as member of a U-Boat crew in the war drama Haie und kleine Fische (1957).
Of athletic, lithe build and owner of a somewhat cold, hypnotic gaze (with a voice to match), Frank soon found himself typecast to disturbingly good effect as psychotic murderers in German and international productions (The Black Panther of Ratana (1963), Das Mädchen vom Moorhof (1958), Der Greifer (1958)). Alternatively, he proved an ideal henchman for spaghetti westerns (Bullets Don't Argue (1964), Johnny Hamlet (1968) and Django, Prepare a Coffin (1968)). Frank didn't seem to mind turning out copies of the same negative in a seemingly endless gallery of ruthless killers and impassive assassins. He did so with relish well into the 1980's and 90's, enjoying guest spots on popular TV crime time shows like Tatort (1970) and Derrick (1974). If Horst Frank was in the cast, you knew pretty much from the start 'whodunnit'.
Behind the menacing heavy, there was a family man and author of poems and chansons. In addition to his screen acting, Frank lent his voice to dubbing work (for the likes of fellow tough guys Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine and Chuck Connors); and to radio, where he voiced Captain Nemo in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "The Mysterious Island".
Likely because of his lack of work in major American or British productions, Frank never quite achieved the international recognition he undoubtedly deserved. He died quite suddenly in May 1999 of a brain hemorrhage, just short of his 70th birthday. - Thomas Mann was probably Germany's most influential author of the 20th century, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Born on 6 June 1875 in Lübeck, his family moved to Munich in 1893, where he lived until 1933 and wrote some of his most successful novels like "Buddenbrocks" (1901), "Death in Venice" (1912) or "The Magic Mountain" (1924). After the Nazi takeover, the humanist and anti-fascist, married to Katia Pringsheim, daughter of a secular Jewish family, emigrated to Switzerland, then to Princeton and Pacific Palisades in the United States, where he finished his great tetra-logy "Joseph and His Brothers" in 1942. Two years later, he became a naturalized US citizen, but finally returned to Europe in 1952. The famous analyst and critique of the German and European soul died on 12 August 1955 in Kilberg near Zurich.
- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Erich Ponto was born on 14 December 1884 in Lübeck [now Schleswig-Holstein], Germany. He was an actor and writer, known for The Third Man (1949), Sky Without Stars (1955) and Schneider Wibbel (1939). He was married to Tony Kresse. He died on 4 February 1957 in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.- Walter Bonn was born on 20 September 1888 in Lübeck [now Schleswig-Holstein], Germany. He was an actor, known for Cipher Bureau (1938), Problem Girls (1953) and The Deadly Game (1941). He died on 8 September 1953 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Willy Brandt was born on 18 December 1913 in Lübeck [now Schleswig-Holstein], Germany. He was married to Brigitte Seebacher, Rut Brandt and Carlota Thorkildsen. He died on 8 October 1992 in Unkel, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ludwig Haas was born on 16 April 1933 in Eutin, Lübeck, Oldenburg [now Schleswig-Holstein], Germany. He was an actor, known for Lindenstraße (1985), Shining Through (1992) and Erfolg (1991). He was married to Marianne Simon. He died on 4 September 2021 in Neumünster, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.- Writer
- Actor
Heinrich Mann, German novelist and the elder brother of Nobel-Prize winner Thomas Mann, is most famous in the English-speaking world for his novel "Professor Unrat" that was turned into the successful 1930 movie "Der Blaue Engel" ("The Blue Angel"). Mann once enjoyed a considerable reputation in German literary circles, but many of his novels and practically all of his essays are unknown to most anglophones as they remain untranslated. He remains of interest as his work details a people enculturated under an authoritarian regime in their struggle to achieve and sustain democracy.
Mann was born in Lübeck on March 27, 1871, the first child of Senator Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and his wife Julia da Silva-Bruhns. Descended from grain merchants and born into the patrician class, Mann started his writing career as an essayist with a determinedly conservative point of view. Eventually, he evolved into a well-known proponent of democracy and socialism.
Mann's education consisted of attendance at a private preparatory school until 1889. Leaving school, he went to work as an apprentice for a Dresden bookseller, but failed at the job. He moved to Berlin in 1891, where he became a published writer. In 1892, he contracted tuberculosis and was cared for in a Swiss sanatorium. Mann, who published his first novel in 1893, became financially independent upon the death of his father.
The next year, Mann moved from Berlin to Munich along with his mother and the rest of the family, and took the post of editor of "Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert." Mann preferred living in France and Italy to Germany, and he spent most of his time in those two countries until the outbreak of World War I.
His early novels were social satires of the German bourgeoisie that showed the society's resistance to democratic ideals. In 1904, he published the novel he is most famous for, "Professor Unrat" ("Professor Garbage"), which details the moral, social and physical decay of a pompous prep school teacher romantically obsessed with a nightclub singer. Josef von Sternberg's 1930 German- and English-language movies based on the novel, "Der Blaue Engel" and "The Blue Angel," made a star out of Marlene Dietrich, who played the bewitching chanteuse Lola Lola.
Mann's 1912 novel "Der Untertan" ("The Patrioteer") features an amoral, manipulative and opportunistic businessman, Diederich Hessling, who uses patriotism to get ahead and winds up as a simulacrum of the Kaiser. An indictment of the militarism and nationalism of prewar Prussia, it was banned by the German government during World War I. Mann used a gallery of grotesques to elucidate the moral weakness and the lack of personal responsibility of the bourgeoisie under the German Empire of Kaiser Wilhelm II. As a youth who bullies the sole Jew in his school, Hessling believed "[h]e was acting on behalf of the whole Christian community of Netzig. How splendid it was to share responsibility, and to be a part of a collective consciousness."
Mann's essay on the great French naturalist novelist "Zola" (1915), satirized Germany and Prussian militarism and blamed World War I on capitalist exploitation and the plutocracy. "Zola" disrupted Mann's relationship with his brother Thomas, who at that time was more conservative than Heinrich. Thomas Mann supported Germany's participation in World War I, and he wrote his own essay in 1918 that directly attacked Heinrich. Thomas Mann's contemporaneous credo was that an artist should be independent and not dabble in politics. The estrangement between the brothers proved only temporary, and eventually, the four years-younger Thomas came to support many of Heinrich's opinions.
As he progressed as a novelist, Mann became firmly committed to the idea of the didactic power of art. He dedicated himself during and after the post war revolutionary period of 1918-19 to teaching Germany about democratic values through his writing. He became popular during the Weimar Republic when the ban on "Der Untertan" was lifted in 1918, and it was republished to great acclaim. The novel, plus "Die Armen" ("The Poor") in 1917, and "Der Kopf" ("The Chief") in 1925, make up Mann's "Das Kaiserreich" ("The Empire") trilogy.
The Prussian Government appointed Mann to the Academy of Arts in Berlin, and in 1931, he was elected the Poetry Section president. In 1933, Mann published "Der Hass" ("Hate"), a novel with the premise that the hate perpetrated by fascism would trigger the Gotterdammerung of civilization. After the Nazis solidified power, he was removed from his post and declared persona non grata due to his novels criticizing German authoritarianism, militarism, and nationalism.
Mann went into exile, first in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and then in Nice, France. While living on the Côte d'Azur, Mann wrote a novel based on French King Henry IV, a promoter of tolerance. It was this king, known as "Henry the Good," who ended the religious civil war racking 16th century France by issuing the Edict of Nantes, which allowed Protestants to openly practice their religion.
After the Nazi conquest of France, Mann fled to Spain, crossing the Pyrenees Mountains on foot at the age of 69. From Spain, he immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Santa Monica, California with his second wife, Nelly Kroeger. His friends had arranged a one-year contract for him at Warner Bros., but he was hobbled by a poor command of English. After the contract expired, Mann had financial difficulties for the rest of his life. He had lost his German and French audiences and the royalties his book sales in Europe had generated, and he became financially dependent on friends and family, including Brother Thomas.
In California, Mann hobnobbed with other German exiles, including Bertolt Brecht. He was virtually unknown in America, his reputation eclipsed by that of his brother. Compounding his difficulties in America, his second wife, who was afflicted with mental illness, committed suicide in 1944.
Mann published his autobiography in 1945, and shortly before he died, had accepted an offer from East Germany to become head of their newly reconstituted Academy of Arts in East Berlin. Mann was not able to actually take over the post, as he died in Santa Monica on March 12, 1950. He was cremated and his ashes interred at the Academy in East Berlin.- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Learining all about music and instruments Von Weber moved around Germany changing his teachers once in a while. In 1813 he became "Kapellmeister" in Prague and in 1816 music director of the "Deutsche Oper" in Dresden. There he supported German operas instead of the Italian ones which were very popular at his time - nevertheless his masterpiece "Der Freischuetz" was played for the first time in Berlin which was known to be more liberal. Was in London for a concert when he crontracted and died because of a disease.- Hans Fitze was born on 16 April 1903 in Lübeck [now Schleswig-Holstein], Germany. He was an actor, known for Bürgerkrieg in Russland (1967), Hugenberg - Gegen die Republik (1967) and Brückenallee Nr. 3 (1967). He died on 25 November 1998 in Hamburg, Germany.
- Peter-Christoph Runge was born on 12 April 1933 in Lübeck [now Schleswig-Holstein], Germany. He was an actor, known for The Love for Three Oranges (1982), Der Wildschütz oder Die Stimme der Natur (1964) and Le comte Ory (1982). He died on 25 June 2010 in Verviers, Belgium.
- Anita Dorris was born on 21 December 1903 in Lübeck [now Schleswig-Holstein], Germany. She was an actress, known for Svengali (1927), Die Sache mit Schorrsiegel (1928) and Liebeshandel (1927). She was married to E.W. Emo. She died on 24 December 1993 in Vienna, Austria.