Klopfer, Eugen

(1886-1950)

   Actor, manager. Klopfer had an active and successful career as a performer. He began acting at age 23 in Munich and then worked in provincial stages until 1918, when he came to Berlin as a character actor engaged to play Kraftkerle, the earthy species of Teuton associated with Heinrich George and Emil Jannings. He gained notoriety in roles befitting his physical type — Götz von Berlichingen, Florian Geyer, Falstaff, Woyzeck, and the like. Such roles became his métier in the 1920s.

   In 1930 Klöpfer became an active member in the National Socialist Party, and in 1934 the new regime promptly bestowed upon him the honorific Staatsschauspieler (state actor). Joseph Goebbels saw personally to the 1936 appointment of Klöpfer as head of the Volks-bühne—which the Nazis had expropriated in 1934 after they came to power—but by 1938 the actor's alcoholism had began to cloud both his talent and his judgment, especially in his relations with women. Philandering ultimately brought Goebbels's wrath down upon Klöpfer—although Goebbels condemned Klöpfer not for the number of extramarital affairs he conducted but rather for his "tasteless" way of conducting them and his proclivity to go "out of control" with them. "The theater is not a free range for seduction," Goebbels wrote in his diary about Klöpfer. "I am not a moralist, but you can't keep your eyes closed all the time" (Goebbels, Die Tagebücher, ed. Elke Fröhlich, entry for 4 March 1937 [Munich: Saur, 1987], 3:66).

   By 1943 Klöpfer had produced more "authentically German" plays favored by the regime than had his directing colleagues Heinz Hilpert at the Deutsches Theater and Gustaf Gründgens at the Prussian State Theater combined. He went in and out of favor far more often than did the others, too—yet his "unfortunate vices" and "questionable tendencies" notwithstanding, Goebbels never considered getting rid of Klöpfer altogether. Later Goebbels did remove the Theater am Nollendorfplatz from Klöpfer's portfolio, awarding it to Harald Paulsen instead. In 1948 Allied occupation forces rehabilitated Klöpfer, and he resumed his acting career, though he never regained his former prominence.