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Werner Johannes Krauss (Krauß in German) (23 June 1884 – 20 October 1959) was a German stage and film actor.
Krauss was born at the parsonage of Gestungshausen in Upper Franconia, where his grandfather was Protestant pastor. He spent his childhood in Breslau (present-day Wrocław) and from 1901 attended the teacher's college at Kreuzburg (Kluczbork). After it became known that he worked as an extra at the Breslau Lobe theatre, he was suspended from classes and decided to join a travelling theatre company. In 1903 he debuted at the Guben municipal theatre and later played in Magdeburg, Bromberg (Bydgoszcz), at the Theater
Werner Johannes Krauss (Krauß in German) (23 June 1884 – 20 October 1959) was a German stage and film actor.
Krauss was born at the parsonage of Gestungshausen in Upper Franconia, where his grandfather was Protestant pastor. He spent his childhood in Breslau (present-day Wrocław) and from 1901 attended the teacher's college at Kreuzburg (Kluczbork). After it became known that he worked as an extra at the Breslau Lobe theatre, he was suspended from classes and decided to join a travelling theatre company. In 1903 he debuted at the Guben municipal theatre and later played in Magdeburg, Bromberg (Bydgoszcz), at the Theater Aachen, in Nuremberg and Munich.
By the agency of Alexander Moissi, in 1913 he met the noted theatre director Max Reinhardt, who took Krauss to his Deutsches Theater in Berlin. However, Krauss initially only got minor and secondary roles like King Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet or Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, wherefore after his military discharge as a midshipman of the German Navy in 1916 he also pursued a career as a film actor.
Committed to sinister characters, Krauss became a worldwide sensation for his demonic portrayal of the titular character in Robert Wiene's 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. He also played the title role of William Shakespeare's Othello in a 1920 adaption, and played Iago in a 1922 adaptation. He was prominently featured in Paul Leni's Waxworks (1924), Ewald Andre Dupont's Varieté (1925), F.W. Murnau's Herr Tartüff, and The Student of Prague (1926). He still appeared on stage of the Deutsches Theater, as in Strindberg's A Dream Play filling five roles or as Wilhelm Voigt in the 1931 premiere of Zuckmayers The Captain of Köpenick, and guest performances even brought him to London and New York.
In 1933 Krauss joined the Vienna Burgtheater ensemble to perform in Campo di Maggio (German: Hundert Tage), a drama written by Giovacchino Forzano together with Benito Mussolini, whereafter he was received by the Italian dictator and also made the acquaintance of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Krauss got himself into the Nazi ideology. Goebbels appointed him Vice president of the Reichskulturkammer theatre department and granted him the title of an "Actor of the State". Adolf Hitler rated him as a cultural ambassador of Nazi Germany. Krauss and his long-time mentor Max Reinhardt met for the last time at the 1937 Salzburg Festival, shortly before Reinhardt's emigration to the United States.
He simultaneously played the roles of several stereotypical Jewish characters – among them Rabbi Loew and Sekretar Levy – in Veit Harlan's notoriously antisemitic propaganda film Jud Süß (1940), implementing Harlan's concept of a common Jewish root. He also played Shylock in Lothar Müthel's extreme production of The Merchant of Venice staged at the Burgtheater in 1943. The next year his name was added to the Gottbegnadeten list.
After World War II, Krauss was 'forgiven' to the extent of being invited to German film festivals. Krauss died in relative obscurity in Vienna, Austria in 1959. He was cremated.
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Tags: German (3), Actor (2), Silent Cinema (2), Died 1959 (2), Born 1884 (2), Supporting Actor (1), German Silent Actor (1), German Film Actor (1), German Actor (1), Silent Actor (1), Silent Film Actor (1), Died Aged 75 (1), Film Actor (1), Nazi Germany (1), 1920s (1), Germany (1), Nazi (1)
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