Erwin Geschonneck
Erwin Geschonneck (* December 27 1906 in Bartenstein, Circle Friedland, Prussia, † March 12, 2008 in Berlin) was a German actor. His biggest success he experienced in East Germany, where he was considered one of the most successful and most prolific actors.
Life
Geschonneck was the son of a cobbler and night watchman. In 1908 the family moved to Berlin in the Rosenthaler suburb. Geschonneck earned after high school his living as a casual laborer, an office boy and house servants. In 1929 he joined the Communist Party and played in communist amateur theater, agitprop and cabaret groups; In 1931, he had in Kuhle Wampe or: Who owns the world? his first small film role.
After the " seizure of power" by the Nazis in 1933, he emigrated to Poland in the Soviet Union. In 1938 he was forced by the NKVD to leave the Soviet Union. In Prague, he was arrested on 31 March 1939 and handed over to the Gestapo. He was a prisoner in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Dachau and Neuengamme. On May 3, 1945, he survived the sinking of the Bay of Lübeck by British aircraft sank KZ - ship Cap Arcona.
From 1946 to 1948 Geschonneck worked at the Hamburg Chamber of games and played in various film productions. 1949 brought him Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel at the Berliner Ensemble. There he played big roles as Matti in Puntila and his Man Matti by Brecht, the village judge Adam in Kleist's The Broken Jug and the Don Juan in Molière's eponymous piece. At the same time a very successful career began at the DEFA and the DFF, during which he with many important directors of the GDR worked (see filmography ). So Geschonneck played in 1974 in the movie Jacob the Liar, which was nominated as the only DEFA film for an Oscar.
Geschonneck, since 1949 member of the SED, was honored by the GDR leadership with highest honors: 1961 and 1986 National Prize 1st class, 1976 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold, 1981 Karl -Marx- Orden. He pleaded even after the end of the GDR still explicitly to communism.
In a critics' poll Geschonneck in 1992 voted the best East German actor. 1993 Geschonneck received the German Film Prize for his life 's work. On 28 December 2004 Geschonneck was made an honorary member of the newly founded German Film Academy.
Geschonneck lived with his fourth wife Heike at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. He left two sons, the German director Matti Geschonneck and the computer forensics specialist and author Alexander Geschonneck, and a daughter from his marriage to Doris Weikow, the journalist Fina Geschonneck.
Geschonneck was until 2007 a member of the PDS and after its merger with WASG until his death in the newly constituted party Die Linke.
Erwin Geschonneck was buried on 3 May 2008 in the presence of hundreds of fans and companions in close proximity to the graves of Brecht, Weigel and Tabori on the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery in Berlin.
Filmography
Awards
Writings
- Information and views. VFF, Berlin, 1981 ( ed. by Hermann Herlinghaus )
- My troubled years. Dietz -Verlag, Berlin, 1984 ( with Günter Agde ) - paperback edition: Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0161-4