Fritz Kortner

Fritz Kortner
Fritz Kortner in 1959.
Born	Fritz Nathan Kohn (1892-05-12)12 May 1892 Vienna, Austria
Died	22 July 1970(1970-07-22) (aged 78) Munich, Germany
Occupation	Actor and Theatre director

Fritz Kortner (12 May 1892 – 22 July 1970) was an Austrian-born stage and film actor and theatre director.

Life and career

Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn. He studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After graduating, he joined Max Reinhardt in Berlin in 1911 and then Leopold Jessner in 1916. Also in that year he made his first appearance in a silent film. He became one of Germany's best known character actors. His speciality was playing sinister and threatening roles, though he also appeared in the title role of 1930's Dreyfus.

With the coming to power of the Nazis, Kortner, being Jewish, chose to flee Germany in 1933. He emigrated to the United States, where he found work as a character actor and theatre director for a time before returning to Germany in 1949. Upon his return, he became noted for his innovative staging and direction, particularly of classics such as his Richard III (1964) in which the king crawls over piles of corpses at the end.

Kortner died in Munich.

Filmography

• The Night of Queen Isabeau (1920)
• Catherine the Great (1920)
• Hintertreppe (1921)
• Luise Millerin (1922)
• Peter the Great (1922)
• The Earl of Essex (1922)
• Arme Sünderin (1923)
• Nora (1923)
• Warning Shadows (1923)
• Dr. Wislizenus (1924)
• The Hands of Orlac (1924)
• Moderne Ehen (1924)
• Das Leben des Beethoven (1927)
• Mata Hari (1927)
• Pandora's Box (1929)
• Grischa the Cook (1929)
• Giftgas (1929)
• The Three Lovers (1929)
• Atlantik (1929)
• The Other (1930)
• Dreyfus (1930)
• Menschen im Käfig (1930)
• The Great Longing (1930)
• Danton (1931)
• Chu Chin Chow (1934)
• Little Friend (1934)
• Evensong (1934)
• The Crouching Beast (1935)
• Midnight Menace (1937)
• The Razor's Edge (1946)
• Somewhere in the Night (1946)
• Berlin Express (1948)
• The Vicious Circle (1948)
• Epilogue (1950)

Autobiographical works

• 1971: Letzten Endes. Fragmente. (posthumous autobiography, edited by Johanna Kortner)
• 1996: Aller Tage Abend. Autobiographie. Droemer-Knaur, München, 1996, ISBN 3-426-02336-9.
  • Aller Tage Abend. Autobiographie. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89581-098-3.
• 2005: Aller Tage Abend. Auszüge, gelesen von Fritz Kortner. Alexander Verlag, Berlin ISBN 3-89581-137-8.

Literature

• Richard D. Critchfield: From Shakespeare to Frisch: The Provocative Fritz Kortner. Synchron, Heidelberg 2008.

External links

• Fritz Kortner at the Internet Movie Database
• Virtual History - Photographs