Heinrich George

Heinrich George

Heinrich George (October 9, 1893 in Stettin (Szczecin), Pomerania - September 25, 1946 in Oranienburg, Brandenburg) was a German stage and film actor.

He had one of his first roles in the Fritz Lang directed film Metropolis and the first film version of Berlin Alexanderplatz (1931). George is also noted for spooking the young Bertolt Brecht in his first directing job, a production of Arnolt Bronnen's Parracide (1922), when he refused to continue working with the director.^[1] He also appeared in 1930's Dreyfus. He was active in the Communist Party of Germany before the Nazi takeover, who did not permit him to continue work. After arrangements, he took over leading a group of "non-desirable" actors. He acted in a number of propaganda films before and during WWII, including Hitlerjunge Quex, Jud Süß, and Kolberg. He died in 1946 in the Russian concentration camp Speziallager Nr. 7 Sachsenhausen (de:Speziallager Nr. 7 Sachsenhausen), just north of Berlin, for starvation, and not "after an appendix operation", as the official reports stated.

In 1994, after the collapse of Communism and the removal of Soviet occupation troops from Germany thousands of bodies were found in the camp area. Heinrich George could be identified by comparing his DNA with that of his son's.

He was the father of actor Götz George.

Works cited

• Thomson, Peter. 1994. "Brecht's Lives." In The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Ed. Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521414466. p. 22-39.

Notes

External links

• Heinrich George at the Internet Movie Database
• Virtual History - Bibliography and Tobacco cards