Conrad Veidt

Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt in 1941
Personal details
Born	Hans Walter Conrad Veidt (1893-01-22)22 January 1893 Berlin, German Empire
Died	3 April 1943(1943-04-03) (aged 50) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Spouse	Gussy Holl (m. 1918–22) Felicitas Radke (m. 1923–32) Ilona Prager (m. 1933)
Children	1
Occupation	Actor

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt (/faɪt/; 22 January 1893 – 3 April 1943) was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as Different from the Others (1919), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and The Man Who Laughs (1928). After a successful career in German silent films, where he was one of the best-paid stars of UFA, he and his new Jewish wife Ilona Prager were forced to leave Germany in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. They settled in Britain, where he participated in a number of films, including The Thief of Bagdad (1940), before emigrating to the United States around 1941, which led to him having the role of Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942).

Early life

Veidt was born in a bourgeois district of Berlin, in what was then the German Empire, to Amalie Marie (née Gohtz) and Phillip Heinrich Veidt. (Some biographies wrongly state that he was born in Potsdam, probably on the basis of an early claim on his part.) His family was Lutheran.

In 1914, Veidt met actress Lucie Mannheim, with whom he began a relationship. Later in the year Veidt was conscripted into the German Army during World War I. In 1915, he was sent to the Eastern Front as a non-commissioned officer and took part in the Battle of Warsaw. He contracted jaundice and pneumonia, and had to be evacuated to a hospital on the Baltic Sea. While recuperating, he received a letter from Mannheim telling him that she had found work at a theatre in Libau. Intrigued, Veidt applied for the theatre as well. As his condition had not improved, the army allowed him to join the theatre so that he could entertain the troops. While performing at the theatre, he ended his relationship with Mannheim. In late 1916, he was re-examined by the Army and deemed unfit for service; he was given a full discharge in January 1917. Veidt returned to Berlin to pursue his acting career.

Career

Veidt, ca. 1920

From 1916 until his death, Veidt appeared in more than 100 films. One of his earliest performances was as the murderous somnambulist Cesare in director Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a classic of German Expressionist cinema, with Werner Krauss and Lil Dagover. His starring role in The Man Who Laughs (1928), as a disfigured circus performer whose face is cut into a permanent grin, provided the (visual) inspiration for the Batman villain the Joker, created in 1940 by Bill Finger. Veidt also starred in other silent horror films such as The Hands of Orlac (1924), another film directed by Robert Wiene, The Student of Prague (1926) and Waxworks (1924), in which he played Ivan the Terrible.

Painting of Conrad Veidt by Milena Pavlović-Barili, the most notable female artist of Serbian modernism.

Veidt also appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919), one of the earliest films to sympathetically portray homosexuality, although the characters in it do not end up happily. He had a leading role in Germany's first talking picture, Das Land ohne Frauen (Land Without Women, 1929).

He moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s and made a few films, but the advent of talking pictures and his difficulty with speaking English led him to return to Germany. During this period, he lent his expertise to tutoring aspiring performers, one of whom was the later American character actress Lisa Golm.

Emigration

Veidt fervently opposed the Nazi regime and donated a major portion of his personal fortune to Britain to assist in the war effort. Soon after the Nazi Party took power in Germany, by March 1933, Joseph Goebbels was purging the film industry of anti-Nazi sympathizers and Jews, and so in 1933, a week after Veidt's marriage to Ilona Prager, a Jewish woman, the couple emigrated to Britain before any action could be taken against either of them.

Goebbels had imposed a "racial questionnaire" in which everyone employed in the German film industry had to declare their "race" to continue to work. When Veidt was filling in the questionnaire, he answered the question about what his Rasse (race) was by writing that he was a Jude (Jew). Veidt was not Jewish, but his wife was Jewish, and Veidt would not renounce the woman he loved. Additionally, Veidt, who was opposed to anti-Semitism, wanted to show solidarity with the German Jewish community, who were rapidly being stripped of their rights as German citizens in the spring of 1933. As one of Germany's most popular actors, Veidt had already been informed that if he was prepared to divorce his wife and declare his support for the new regime, he could continue to act in Germany. Several other leading actors who had been opposed to the Nazis before 1933 switched allegiances. In answering the questionnaire by stating he was a Jew, Veidt rendered himself unemployable in Germany, but stated this sacrifice was worth it as there was nothing in the world that would compel him to break with his wife. Upon hearing about what Veidt had done, Goebbels remarked that he would never act in Germany again.

File:SpyInBlack-Veidt.jpg

Conrad Veidt in The Spy in Black (1939)

After arriving in Britain, he perfected his English and starred in the title role of the original anti-Nazi version of Lion Feuchtwanger's novel, Jew Süss (1934) directed by German-born US director Lothar Mendes and produced by Michael Balcon for Gaumont-British. He became a British citizen by 1938. By this point multi-lingual, Veidt made films in both French with expatriate French directors and in English, including three of his best-known roles for British director Michael Powell in The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

Later career in the US

By 1941, he and Ilona had moved to Hollywood to assist in the British effort in making American films that might persuade the then-neutral and still isolationist US to join the war against the Nazis, who had conquered all of continental Europe and were bombing the United Kingdom at the time. Before leaving the United Kingdom, Veidt gave his life savings to the British government to help finance the war effort. Realizing that Hollywood would most likely typecast him in Nazi roles, he had his contract mandate that they must always be villains.

He starred in a few films, such as George Cukor's A Woman's Face (1941) where he received billing just under Joan Crawford's and Nazi Agent (1942), in which he had a dual role as both an aristocratic German Nazi spy and as the man's twin brother, an anti-Nazi American. His best-known Hollywood role was as the sinister Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1942), a film which was written and began pre-production before the United States entered World War II.

Personal life

Conrad Veidt married three times: he first married Augusta Holl, a cabaret entertainer known as "Gussy", on 18 June 1918. They divorced four years later. Gussy later married German actor Emil Jannings. Veidt's second wife Felicitas Radke was from an aristocratic German family; they married in 1923. Their daughter, Vera Viola Maria, called Viola, was born on 10 August 1925. He last married Ilona Prager, a Hungarian Jew called Lily, in 1933; they were together until his death.^{[citation needed]}

Death

Conrad Veidt died on 3 April 1943 of a massive heart attack while playing golf at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles with singer Arthur Fields and his personal physician, Dr. Bergman, who pronounced him dead on the scene. Veidt was 50 years old. In 1998, his ashes were placed in a niche of the columbarium at the Golders Green Crematorium in north London.

Complete filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1917	The Path of Death	Rolf
1917	When the Dead Speak	Richard von Worth
1917	Fear	Indian Priest
1917	The Sea Battle
1917	The Spy
1918	The Mystery of Bangalore	Dinja
1918	The Serenyi
1918	The Mexican
1918	Diary of a Lost Woman	Dr. Julius
1918	Jettchen Gebert's Story	Doktor Friedrich Köstling
1918	Colomba	Henrik van Rhyn
1918	Let There Be Light	Herr Kramer
1918	The Story of Dida Ibsen	Erik Norrensen
1918	Henriette Jacoby	Doktor Friedrich Köstling
1918	Not of the Woman Born	Satan
1919	The Japanese Woman	The Secretary
1919	Victim of Society	Prosecutor Chrysander
1919	Prostitution	Alfred Werner
1919	Around the World in Eighty Days	Phineas Fogg
1919	Peer Gynt (2 parts)	Ein fremder Passagier
1919	Different from the Others	Paul Körner
1919	The Ocarina	Jaap
1919	Prince Cuckoo	Karl Kraker
1919	Madness	Bankier Lorenzen
1919	Unheimliche Geschichten	Der Tod (framing story) / The stranger (ep.1) / The assassin (ep.2) / Traveller (ep.3) / Club president (ep.4) / Husband (ep.5)
1919	Nocturne of Love	Frederic Chopin
1919	Opium	Dr. Richard Armstrong Jr.
1920	The Count of Cagliostro	The Minister
1920	Figures of the Night	Clown
1920	Satan	Lucifer / Hermit / Gubetta / Grodski
1920	The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari	Cesare
1920	The Merry-Go-Round	Petre Karvan
1920	Patience	Sir Percy Parker
1920	The Night at Goldenhall	Lord Reginald Golden / Harald Golden
1920	The Eyes of the World	Julianne's Lover, Johannes Kay
1920	Kurfürstendamm	Teufel
1920	The Head of Janus	Dr. Warren / Mr. O'Connor
1920	Moriturus
1920	The Clan
1920	Evening – Night – Morning	Brilburn - Maud's brother
1920	Manolescu's Memoirs	Manolescu
1920	Christian Wahnschaffe	Christian Wahnschaffe
1920	Temperamental Artist	Arpad Czaslo
1921	People in Ecstasy	Professor Munk, Komponist
1921	The Secret of Bombay	Dichter Tossi
1921	Journey into the Night	Der Maler
1921	Desire	Ivan - a young Russian dancer
1921	Love and Passion	Jalenko, the Gypsy
1921	The Love Affairs of Hector Dalmore	Hektor Dalmore
1921	Country Roads and the Big City	Raphael, der Geiger
1921	Danton
1921	Lady Hamilton	Lord Nelson
1921	The Indian Tomb (2 parts)	Ayan III / Fürst von Eschnapur / The Majarajah of Bengal
1921	The Passion of Inge Krafft	Hendryck Overland
1922	Lucrezia Borgia	Cesare Borgia
1923	Paganini	Niccolò Paganini
1923	William Tell	Hermann Gessler
1923	Gold and Luck	The Count
1924	Carlos and Elisabeth	Don Carlos
1924	The Hands of Orlac	Paul Orlac
1924	Waxworks	Ivan the Terrible
1924	Husbands or Lovers	Der Liebhaber, ein Dichter
1925	Count Kostia	Comte Kostia
1925	Destiny	Graf L. M. Vranna
1925	Ingmar's Inheritance	Hellgum
1926	The Fiddler of Florence	Renées Vater
1926	The Brothers Schellenberg	Wenzel Schellenberg / Michael Schellenberg
1926	Love is Blind	Dr. Lamare
1926	Should We Be Silent?	Paul Hartwig, Maler
1926	The Woman's Crusade	Der Staatsanwalt
1926	The Student of Prague	Balduin, ein Student
1926	The Flight in the Night	Heinrich IV
1927	The Beloved Rogue	King Louis XI
1927	A Man's Past	Paul La Roche
1928	The Man Who Laughs	Gwynplaine / Lord Clancharlie
1929	Land Without Women	Dick Ashton, telegrapher
1929	The Last Performance	Erik the Great
1930	The Last Company	Hauptmann Burk
1930	Menschen im Käfig (People in the Cage)	Kingsley
1930	The Great Longing	Himself
1931	The Man Who Murdered	Marquis de Sévigné
1931	The Night of Decision	General Gregori Platoff
1931	The Congress Dances	Prince Metternich
1931	The Other Side	Hauptmann Stanhope
1932	Rasputin, Demon with Women	Grigori Rasputin
1932	Congress Dances	Prince Metternich
1932	The Black Hussar	Rittmeister Hansgeorg von Hochberg
1932	Rome Express	Zurta
1933	The Empress and I	Marquis de Pontignac
1933	F.P.1	Maj. Ellissen
1933	I Was a Spy	Commandant Oberaertz
1933	The Wandering Jew	Matathias
1934	William Tell	Gessler (both German- and English-language versions)
1934	Jew Suss	Josef Süss Oppenheimer
1934	Bella Donna	Mahmoud Baroudi
1935	The Passing of the Third Floor Back	The Stranger
1935	King of the Damned	Convict 83
1937	Dark Journey	Baron Karl Von Marwitz
1937	Under the Red Robe	Gil de Berault
1938	Storm Over Asia	Erich Keith
1938	The Chess Player	Le baron de Kempelen
1939	The Spy in Black	Captain Hardt
1940	Contraband	Capt. Andersen
1940	The Thief of Bagdad	Jaffar
1940	Escape	General Kurt von Kolb
1941	A Woman's Face	Torsten Barring
1941	Whistling in the Dark	Joseph Jones
1941	The Men in Her Life	Stanislas Rosing
1942	All Through the Night	Ebbing
1942	Nazi Agent	Otto Becker / Baron Hugo Von Detner
1942	Casablanca	Major Heinrich Strasser
1943	Above Suspicion	Hassert Seidel	Released Posthumously

External links

• Conrad Veidt at the Internet Movie Database
• Conrad Veidt at the TCM Movie Database
• Conrad Veidt at Find a Grave
• Pictures of Conrad Veidt.
• Conrad Veidt – The German-Hollywood Connection
• Pictures of Conrad Veidt
• The Conrad Veidt Home Page
• Conrad Veidt Biography