Werner Krauss

Werner Johannes Krauss (23 June 1884 – 20 October 1959) was a German stage and film actor who became one of the most prominent theatrical figures in early twentieth-century Germany. Born at the parsonage of Gestungshausen bei Sonnefeld in Upper Franconia, where his grandfather served as a Protestant pastor, Krauss spent his childhood in Breslau. Beginning in 1901, he attended the teacher's college at Kreuzburg, but after his work as an extra at the Breslau Lobe-Theater was discovered, he was suspended and chose instead to join a travelling theatre company.

Without formal actor training, Krauss made his professional debut at the Guben municipal theatre in 1903. He subsequently performed in Magdeburg, Bromberg, Aachen, Nuremberg, and Munich. Through the intervention of actor Alexander Moissi, he came to the attention of theatre director Max Reinhardt in 1913, who brought him to the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. His early roles there were secondary in nature, including King Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust. Following his discharge from the Imperial German Navy in 1916, where he had served as a midshipman, Krauss expanded into film work.

His first film appearance came in Richard Oswald's 1916 Tales of Hoffmann. He achieved international recognition through his portrayal of the title character in Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a film regarded as a milestone of German Expressionism. That same year he played the title role in a film adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello, and in 1922 he appeared as Iago in a separate film adaptation of the same play. Also in 1922, Krauss took on the role of the noble Jewish hero in Nathan the Wise, based on Lessing's play. He went on to appear in Paul Leni's Waxworks (1924), F. W. Murnau's Tartuffe, and The Student of Prague (1926).

In 1924, Krauss joined the ensemble of the Prussian State Theatre in Berlin, and that same year his stage work brought him to Broadway in New York City, where Max Reinhardt staged Karl Vollmöller's The Miracle. Krauss returned to the Deutsches Theater from 1926 onward, taking on demanding roles such as five separate parts in Strindberg's A Dream Play and the lead role of Wilhelm Voigt in the 1931 world premiere of Carl Zuckmayer's The Captain of Köpenick. He also performed regularly at the Vienna Burgtheater and gave guest performances in London.

Krauss was an open supporter of the Nazi Party and its ideology. When the Nazis came to power in January 1933, he was performing in Vienna as Napoleon in 100 Tage, a drama co-written by Benito Mussolini and Giovacchino Forzano, after which he was received by Mussolini and met Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. He was appointed Vice President of the Reichskulturkammer theatre department, a position he held from 1933 to 1935, and was designated a Staatsschauspieler in 1934. Following the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934, Krauss signed the Aufruf der Kulturschaffenden, which called for merging the offices of President and Chancellor under Adolf Hitler. Both Goebbels and Hitler regarded him as a cultural ambassador of Nazi Germany.

His final collaboration with Max Reinhardt took place at the 1937 Salzburg Festival, where they staged Goethe's Faust, with Krauss again playing Mephistopheles, shortly before Reinhardt emigrated to the United States. In 1940, Krauss played six stereotypical Jewish characters simultaneously in Veit Harlan's antisemitic propaganda film Jud Süß, a role that made him a deeply controversial figure. He also played Shylock in Lothar Müthel's production of The Merchant of Venice at the Burgtheater in 1943. In 1944, he was added to the Gottbegnadeten list of artists deemed indispensable, exempting him from military service.

After the war, Krauss was expelled from Austria, banned from performing in Germany, and his films were proscribed. He underwent a denazification program from 1947 to 1948, after which he was permitted to return to Austria and became a naturalized citizen. In 1950, he performed as King Lear at the Ruhr Festival in Recklinghausen, though a subsequent appearance with the Burgtheater ensemble in Berlin in December of that year drew public protest. German citizenship was restored to him in 1951. In 1954, he received the Iffland-Ring, awarded by a committee of German-speaking actors, and was given the Order of the Federal Republic of Germany that same year. In 1955, he received the High Decoration of the Republic of Austria. Krauss published his autobiography, Das Schauspiel meines Lebens (The Play of my Life), in 1958. He died in Vienna on 20 October 1959 at the age of 75 and was cremated and interred in an Ehrengrab at the Vienna Zentralfriedhof.