Ernst Deutsch

Ernst Deutsch, also known professionally as Ernest Dorian, was a Jewish Austrian actor born on 16 September 1890 in Prague and raised there, the son of Ludwig Deutsch, a Prague-based Jewish merchant, and his wife Louise, née Kraus. He attended high school in Prague and served in the army after completing his studies. A skilled tennis player, he ranked seventh on the Austro-Hungarian tennis list. He was a childhood friend of Franz Werfel, and in 1922 he married Anuschka Fuchsova, a childhood friend and daughter of Prague industrialist Arthur Fuchs, whose cousin Herbert Fuchs of Robettin was Franz Werfel's brother-in-law.

Deutsch made his stage debut in 1914 under director Berthold Viertel at the People's Theatre in Vienna. Following a brief season in Prague, he was engaged by Edgar Licho for the Albert Theatre in Dresden, where he relocated in 1916. In Dresden he took on roles including Franz Moor in Schiller's The Robbers and Moritz Stiefel in Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening. On 8 October 1916, he appeared in the title role of Walter Hasenclever's Expressionist play The Son at its world premiere, a performance that established his reputation as an Expressionist actor. He returned to the role in 1918 and again in 1923. In 1917, Deutsch joined the Volksbühne in Berlin, where he continued to perform on various stages until 1933, with guest appearances in Hamburg, Munich, and Vienna, and participation in a South American tour. Beginning in 1916, he appeared in 42 silent films.

In April 1933, Deutsch left Germany in response to Nazi antisemitism, returning first to Vienna and Prague before giving guest performances in Zürich and Brussels. In 1936 he appeared in London's West End in Charles Bennett's play Page From a Diary. He emigrated to New York City in 1938 and appeared on Broadway from 1938 to 1941, with credits including The Talley Method and I Have Been Here Before. He subsequently moved to Hollywood, where he became an American citizen and began appearing in films under the name Ernest Dorian from 1942 onward, frequently cast as Nazis and German officers.

After a stay in Buenos Aires in 1946, Deutsch returned to Europe the following year via Paris, settling in Vienna and joining the Burgtheater. In 1948 he appeared at the National Theatre in The Helpers of God, a play about Red Cross founder Henri Dunant. That same year he received the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 9th Venice International Film Festival for his performance in Der Prozeß. Three years later he relocated to Berlin, where he performed at the Schiller and Schlossparktheater and toured in Germany and abroad. Among his most celebrated stage roles were the title character in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise, which he performed more than 2,000 times and toured throughout Europe, and Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, both of which received critical praise.

To English-speaking audiences, Deutsch is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Baron Kurtz in Carol Reed's 1949 film noir The Third Man, starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. He died on 22 March 1969 in West Berlin and is buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Berlin highway. In 1973, on the fourth anniversary of his death, Friedrich Schütter's former Junges Theater in the Uhlenhorst quarter of Hamburg was renamed in his honor, recognizing his staging of Nathan the Wise there shortly before his death.