Forster, Rudolf

(1889-1968)

   Actor. Though Forster's acting career began well before World War I (with several traveling troupes in his native Austria), he seemed to burst on the scene in 1920 in a series of spectacular performances for both Max Reinhardt and Leopold Jessner. At the Berlin State Theater, with Fritz Kortner in the title roles of Richard III, Othello, and Macbeth, Forster brought to the roles of Buckingham, Cassio, and Banquo, respectively, a style which Herbert Ihering termed "altogether new: sharp, cynical, polished, and vulgar" (Berliner Börsen-Courier, 16 February 1925). Throughout the 1920s, Forster played classics, revivals, and premieres with a riveting modernist sensibility, emphasizing the fragmentation of characters; his specialty was exploring the "conflicted" inner nature of roles such as the Grand Inquisitor in Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos, even though most audiences and critics had rarely before imagined such inner conflicts existed. He became best known internationally in the film version of Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), in which he played Mackie Messer. Forster attempted an American career in the late 1930s, but he returned to Berlin in 1940 to work with Heinz Hilpert. In the postwar period, Forster worked steadily in a number of theaters throughout West Germany in mature character parts; he also became more active in film and television in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing in more than 40 productions.