Deutsch, Ernst

(1890-1969)

   Actor. Deutsch is most closely identified with his roles in Expressionist plays, and indeed many consider the precedents he set in such plays as Walter Hasenclever's Der Sohn (The Son) to be the model that subsequent "expressionist acting" followed. His interest in acting began in his native Prague, where along with future authors Franz Kafka and Franz Werfels he regularly attended productions at the city's Deutsches Theater. In 1914 Deutsch made his stage debut at the Vienna Volksbühne, and in 1916 he enjoyed his first taste of national acclaim for his performance in Dresden as the title character of the aforementioned Der Sohn. Soon after that Dresden premiere, Deutsch became a regular member of Max Reinhardt's company at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, where he remained until 1933. There he appeared in Expressionist plays such as Georg Kaiser's Von Morgens bis Mitternachts (From Morn to Midnight), but also in popular realistic American plays such as George Manker Hopkins and Arthur Watters's Burlesque, Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings's What Price Glory?, and Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude.

   Throughout the 1920s, Deutsch's angular facial features, thin frame, and abrupt, seemingly painful movement style placed him in demand as a silent film actor. Many of the films in which he appeared capitalized on his Expressionist tendencies toward the bizarre and even the freakish. Those films included Vom Schicksal erdrosselt (Strangled by Fate), Die Tochter des Henkers (Daughter of the Hangman), Die Frau im Käfig (The Woman in a Cage), and Der Golem (The Golem). He later appeared in film versions of Burlesque and From Morn to Midnight.

   Deutsch was forced to flee Berlin in 1933. He returned to his native Prague and later went to Vienna, but by 1938 he had settled in Hollywood, finding work under the name Ernest Dorian in films playing Nazis, German spies, or Wehrmacht officers. His most well-known English-language role, however, came in 1949 as Baron Kurtz in The Third Man with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. In the 1950s he played the title role in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise) more than 2,000 times in tours throughout the German-speaking world. In 1973 the founders of the Junges Theater in Hamburg renamed the theater (founded in 1951) the Ernst Deutsch Theater.