Hörbiger, Paul

(1894-1981)

   Actor. Hörbiger began his acting career in the German-speaking theaters of Czechoslovakia, and from 1920 to 1926 he was a member of the Deutsches Theater company in Prague. He established himself as a superb character actor in Berlin at the Lessing Theater, where he remained from 1926 until 1940. Hörbiger also began his extraordinarily prolific film career in Berlin—one that spanned more than 250 film productions, usually playing anonymous porters (as he did in The Third Man with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten), butlers, deliverymen, and clerks. Hör-biger was forced to leave Berlin in 1940 when he publicly protested the treatment of Jewish colleagues; Joseph Goebbels denounced Hörbiger with insults that questioned the actor's virility. He was nevertheless allowed to work in Vienna, and indeed made his debut at the Burgtheater at age 46. He remained in Vienna through the end of the war, but barely survived it. Nazi officials arrested him in January 1945 on charges of high treason and the BBC announced his execution in April of that year. He nevertheless reemerged in early May to resume working. Such experiences caused a lengthy estrangement between Paul Hörbiger and his brother Attila Hörbiger, whom many in the postwar period accused of close association with the Nazis. In the postwar period Paul appeared in dozens more films and later in televison series. His television career reached its zenith when, at age 75, he starred in the series Der alte Richter (The Old Judge).