New plaque for Anton Walbrook’s house in Berlin

A house in Waltraudstraße, in a leafy suburb of southwest Berlin, was AW’s home from the autumn of 1934 until his departure for Hollywood (and then onto the UK) two years later. On 19 November this year – the anniversary of the actor’s birthday – I was delighted to take part in a programme of events at the house in which a plaque was unveiled to commemorate AW’s time here.

The programme was organised by Dr Rosemarie Killius, who had already hosted a similar ‘Hommage’ for Maria Cebotari in Vienna, as well as other events relating to AW in Frankfurt and elsewhere.

We were joined for the occasion by actor and director Holger Mahlich, whose father-in-law was Wolfgang Liebeneiner (1905-87), an actor and director at the Munich Kammerspiele, Preußisches Staatstheater, UFA studios and other venues familiar to AW – they probably met at some point. Holger read out a passage from Schiller, ‘Der Nachruhm eines Schauspielers’ [‘The posthumous fame of an actor’], after which Dr Killius gave an overview of AW’s film career in Germany, and I added a few words on his life in England.

Dr Killius and I then unveiled the plaque:

Thanks to the kind generosity of the current owners of the house, we were all invited inside for drinks and home-made cake. The interior of the house remains substantially unchanged since AW lived here, and as the cultural tastes of the owners mean that the rooms are full of books and paintings, as well as a grand piano and numerous sculptures, it was not hard to imagine AW living here in similar surroundings. Some glimpses into the actor’s life here can be found in Hanna Heßling’s article, ‘Zigeunerbaron zu Hause: Adolf Wohlbrück plaudert am Kamin,’ Mein Film, No. 484 (1935), pp. 4–6, and in Werner Holl, Das Buch von Adolf Wohlbrück (1935), pp. 44–5.

I’d always understood the house to be located in Zehlendorf, but the owner explained to me that the boundary line between Zehlendorf and Dahlem runs up the middle of the street, with AW’s house lying on the Dahlem side. As this is regarded as a more desirable district, the houses on this side are – rather absurdly – priced far higher than those across the road.

These houses were all built in the early 1930s so presumably AW was the first occupier. The land, I believe, was owned by the industrialist Oskar Pintsch (1844–1912) and his wife Helene (1857–1923), patrons of the Oskar-Helene-Heim für Heilung und Erziehung gebrechlicher Kinder – an orthopaedic home for children and others with disabilities – which used to stand just up the road, and which gives it name to the local U-bahn station. I’m not sure if there is any link between their philanthropic ideals for healthcare and the construction of the houses, but AW’s house is beautifully designed. Each room has two doors, so that you can walk around each floor in a circle, from room to room, and if all the doors are opened natural light floods in from all four sides.

Also present in the house was Frau Dr. Karin Timme, of the publisher Frank & Timme GmbH, with whom we are having some discussions about a possible German translation of the biography. Copies of the book were for sale, alongside Holger Mahlich’s biography of Wolfgang Liebeneiner, and Dr Killius’ book on Maria Cebotari.

Afterwards, a group of us went to the nearby local history museum, the Heimatmuseum Zehlendorf, for a special screening of Allotria (1936), the stylish and fast-paced comedy in which AW co-starred with Renate Müller (for the fourth time), Hilde Hildebrand (for the sixth time), Heinz Rühmann and Jenny Jugo. All in all, this was a wonderful day, and we are all deeply indebted to Dr Killius for her hard work in organising the Hommage and for commissioning the design and construction of the plaque.

Vienna, the Cinématographe, and the birth of Anton Walbrook

Anton Walbrook was born in Vienna – as Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbruck – on this day in 1896, less than eight months after the arrival of the Cinématographe.

The Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis, had unveiled their Cinématographe – a lightweight device combining camera, printer and projector – to the public in Paris in December 1895 but were now touring their new invention around the world.  The Vienna screenings opened on 27 March 1896 and followed the same pattern as in Paris, with a private show at the city’s k. k. Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt [Graphic Research Institute] followed by public demonstrations at Kärtner Straße 45 in the city centre. These screenings ran throughout the day from 10 in the morning until 8 at night and, for a fee of fifty kreuzer, visitors could watch a selection of short documentary films accompanied by live piano music. To make the shows more attractive to Viennese citizens, the Lumière agents Alexander Promio and Alexander Werschinger filmed a series of sequences around the capital in early April: shots of St Stephan’s Cathedral, the huge Ferris wheel in the Prater (which would feature in The Third Man five decades later) and scenes of crowds strolling through the Stadtpark. A special screening of these was arranged for the Emperor Franz Joseph in the Hofburg on 18 April 1896. Werschinger recalled the scene:

We had a small room on the second floor of the Burg, as the palace is known, which we were able to try out two days in advance. The entire presentation was to be limited to five minutes, as it was feared that the flickering pictures could damage His Majesty’s eyes. It was also very difficult to explain to the attendant that the demonstration had to be carried out in the dark. He said that this was not possible because court protocol demanded that two candles should always be lit in the presence of His Majesty. Everyone was amazed that after he had seen the pictures, the Emperor demanded very animatedly that they be shown again twice.

The cinema had arrived in Vienna.

Vienna was still buzzing with excitement over this new form of entertainment when young Adolf Wohlbrück was born, but nobody at the time could foresee that ‘moving pictures’ would provide a career for the newborn child. Nor could they have foreseen that within twenty years the Emperor’s candles would be extinguished and his Empire dismembered. For the time being, Vienna was on the rise.

Reinhold Völkel, ‘Café Griensteidl’, painted in the year of Wohlbrück’s birth

Karl Lueger’s Christian Social Party had recently wrestled power from the Liberals and with Lueger as Mayor, Vienna began its transformation into a city of elegant gardens and parks. Artists, writers, musicians and other intellectuals met to discuss their views over coffee in Café Griensteidl, Café Central, or Café Museum. Prominent among these was a group known as Jung Wien [Young Vienna], whose members included the playwrights Arthur Schnitzler – then writing his controversial Reigen – and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Egon Schiele was about to spearhead the Wiener Secession art movement, ‘Waltz King’ Johann Strauss the Younger – composer of the Blue Danube waltz, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron [The Gypsy Baron] – lived in Igelgasse, Freud had just coined the term ‘psychoanalysis’, Gustav Mahler had recently been appointed Director of the State Opera House, and cinema was the newest addition to the arts in which the Wohlbrück family had been involved for centuries.

Adolf Ferdinand Bernhard Hermann Wohlbrück (1864-1940), a much-loved and well-known clown with the Schumann circus.

The future actor’s father Adolf Wohlbrück had married – at the age of 32 – Gisela Rosa Cohn, a 17-year-old girl from a respectable Viennese family. Born on 21 July 1879 in Vienna, she was the daughter of Wilhelm and Antonia Kohn. Her father – a merchant – had recently died, and it seems her parents had hoped for a better match: having a clown for a son-in-law was rather a disappointment. Nonetheless, Gisela fell pregnant almost immediately and their first child, Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück, was born at their home at Jörgerstraße 32, in northwest Vienna, on Thursday 19 November 1896. He was baptised exactly a month later by Fr. Emil Janetzky, the parish priest of Hernals, with religion marked as ‘Catholic’ in the final column (below.)

Baptismal certificate

Although it is frequently stated that Wohlbrück’s mother was Jewish – and the Kohn name clearly indicates Jewish ancestry – her family seem to have embraced Catholicism with ardour: Theodor Kohn (1845–1915), the Catholic archbishop of Olmütz, in Austro-Hungarian Moravia, was a close relative. As I recently discussed in another blogpost elsewhere, the actor’s sense of Jewish identity was more complex and nuanced than is generally stated.

Archbishop Theodor Kohn (1893–1904)

Barely a year later, his sister Antonie Marie was born on 13 November 1897 – in Stuttgart, due to the itinerant nature of circus life. Gisela’s mother was unhappy with the prospect of her grandchildren spending their young lives on the road with a caravan of circus performers, and insisted that they remain in Vienna. In consequence, the siblings were raised largely by their grandmother Antonia, who lived in the same street. Over the next few years, his Viennese childhood would involve both the spectacular performances of the circus and the more serious atmosphere of his monastic education at the ‘Lazarenkloster’, run by the Christian Brothers in Schopenhauerstraße – twin strands of performance and discipline that he would pull together in his acting career. The latter only began, however, when the family moved to Berlin in 1904 and another chapter in his life began…

Adolf and his younger sister Antoinette Marie Wohlbrück in Berlin 1904

A Birthday and a Biography

AW was born on this day in 1896 and this will be the last time I celebrate the anniversary of his birth before the publication of my biography, Anton Walbrook. A Life of Masks and Mirrors, which should be available in a few weeks time.

As many of you know, my original aim had been to have the biography published in the summer of 2017 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his death. For various reasons, however, that was not to be. Although I regret this in some regards, it was probably a good thing because my research uncovered so much more over the last three years. In fact, even since submitting the manuscript and doing final proof checks on the printer’s drafts, I’m still coming up with new nuggets of information or further thoughts about AW’s life and work.

At some point, though, one needs to draw a line under a project and get it out there, otherwise it will never see the light of day. It is too tempting to keep revising, improving, correcting, expanding, pushing an evolving work-in-progress towards an ever-receding horizon, and then find yourself at the end of life with a crumpled, dog-eared manuscript that no one will know what to do with when you’re gone. A Life of Masks and Mirrors will never be the definitive word on Walbrook/Wohlbrück, but it represents the fruits of over a decade of work as it now stands; any amendments, corrections or additions will need to wait for a second edition.

To mark today’s anniversary, I thought I would share a sneak preview of the opening pages of the biography, heralding AW’s birth in the city of Vienna:

“In March 1896 the Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis, brought their new invention to Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Cinématographe – a lightweight device combining camera, printer and projector – had been unveiled to the public in Paris a few months earlier and was now touring the world. The Vienna screenings opened on 27 March 1896 and followed the same pattern as in Paris, with a private show at the city’s k. k. Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt [Graphic Research Institute] followed by public demonstrations at Kärtner Straße 45 in the city centre. These screenings ran throughout the day from 10 in the morning until 8 at night and, for a fee of fifty kreuzer, visitors could watch a selection of short documentary films accompanied by live piano music. To make the shows more attractive to Viennese citizens, the Lumière agents Alexander Promio and Alexander Werschinger filmed a series of sequences around the capital in early April: shots of St Stephan’s Cathedral, the huge Ferris wheel in the Prater (which would feature in The Third Man five decades later) and scenes of crowds strolling through the Stadtpark. A special screening of these was arranged for the Emperor Franz Joseph in the Hofburg on 18 April 1896. Werschinger recalled the scene:

We had a small room on the second floor of the Burg, as the palace is known, which we were able to try out two days in advance. The entire presentation was to be limited to five minutes, as it was feared that the flickering pictures could damage His Majesty’s eyes. It was also very difficult to explain to the attendant that the demonstration had to be carried out in the dark. He said that this was not possible because court protocol demanded that two candles should always be lit in the presence of His Majesty. Everyone was amazed that after he had seen the pictures, the Emperor demanded very animatedly that they be shown again twice.

The cinema had arrived in Vienna.

Seven months later, in the same city, Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück
was born.

Vienna was still buzzing with excitement over this new form of entertainment, but nobody at the time could foresee that ‘moving pictures’ would provide a career for the newborn child. Nor could they have foreseen that within twenty years the Emperor’s candles would be extinguished and his Empire dismembered. For the time being, Vienna was on the rise.

Karl Lueger’s Christian Social Party had recently wrestled power from the Liberals and with Lueger as Mayor, Vienna began its transformation into a city of elegant gardens and parks. Artists, writers, musicians and other intellectuals met to discuss their views over coffee in Café Griensteidl, Café Central, or Café Museum. Prominent among these was a group known as Jung Wien [Young Vienna], whose members included the playwrights Arthur Schnitzler – then writing his controversial Reigen – and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Egon Schiele was about to spearhead the Wiener Secession art movement, ‘Waltz King’ Johann Strauss the Younger – composer of the Blue Danube waltz, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron [The Gypsy Baron] – lived in Igelgasse, Freud had just coined the term ‘psychoanalysis’, Gustav Mahler had recently been appointed Director of the State Opera House, and cinema was the newest addition to the arts in which the
Wohlbrück family had been involved for centuries….”

The chapter then goes on to discuss AW’s ancestry and family background, his childhood in Vienna and Berlin, and the beginning of his acting career at the Deutsches Theater. Those who want to read more will have to wait for the book to come out, but in the meantime, here’s some of that wonderful footage of Vienna, here showing the busy pedestrian crossing on Ringstraße opposite the magnificent State Opera House, then known as the Wien Hofoper:

WOHLBRÜCK – WALBROOK at the Deutsches Historisches Museum

The cover of ‘Wohlbrück & Walbrook. Schauspieler, Gentleman, Emigrant.’
(Vienna: SYNEMA-Publikationen, 2020), the new 120-page book of essays edited by Frederik Lang, Brigitte Mayr & Michael Omasta that was published to accompany the retrospective season in Berlin

 

You know what they say about waiting for ages for a bus, only for two or three to arrive at once? Well, it looks like 2020 has turned out to be a bumper year for fans of AW, and for a year that has already provided enough misery and chaos to last a lifetime, it’s good to know that it will be marked down in the annals for at least something positive.

The manuscript of my biography was already with the publishers and had just about completed its review process when the news was announced that the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin would be holding a major retrospective season dedicated to AW, screening 26 films at the Zeughauskino – seven more than were shown at the Österreichisches Filmmuseum in Vienna in 2014. The selection include rarely-screened early films such as Wüstenrausch (Von Bolvary, 1923), Salto Mortale (Dupont, 1931) and Die fünf verfluchten Gentlemen (Duvivier, 1932) as well as the documentary Der Schatten des Studenten (Ulrich, 1989).

If the timing of this major event was remarkable – given its coincidence with the publication of my biography, which has been over a decade in the making – it was also tragic, given its coincidence with the global covid-19 pandemic. UK travel restrictions and other factors meant that it was impossible to travel to Berlin to attend any of the screenings, and a number of other AW fans and film scholars told me of their disappointment that they would also have to miss out. It must have been a blow for the organisers too, as social distancing requirements meant that audience numbers had to be restricted. One might wonder if it could have been postponed, but there is much uncertainty about if, when, and how our routines will be returning to ‘normal’, and whether or not there will be further spikes of the virus over the winter months or in the near future. There is no guarantee that holding the screenings in a few months time would ensure it was clear from pandemic restrictions, and I think the organisers were right to go ahead and do what they could.

Certainly the German press seems to have regarded the season as a huge success, and there have been enthusiastic reviews in major newspapers such as Die Welt and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Many of these articles have included extensive discussions about AW’s life and work, often referring to him as der schönste Mann des deutschen Films [‘the most beautiful man in German film’], which was the title of a 1997 exhibition held at the Schwules Museum in Berlin (January to March) and the Düsseldorf Film Museum (June to August), and which has since become an oft-quoted moniker for the actor himself.

This additional publicity and media buzz focused on AW should be an advantage when it comes to the publication of my biography, which is now in the final production process – paginated proofs should be ready for me to check in early/mid September. I can’t share details of the cover yet, but it’s going to look fantastic, and the editor believes ‘it’s going to make a gorgeous volume’ – quite appropriate, given that it’s dedicated to ‘the most beautiful man in German film’!

Anton Artefact #8

Letter from Walbrook to a young fan, October 1943

 

This is a letter written by AW to a young fan, Miss Beatrice Claire, in response to the script of a play she had sent him. It was written from the Aldwych Theatre on 6 October 1943, where AW had been playing the role of Kurt Müller in Lilian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine since the previous April.  It would run until December 1943, although the role was taken over by Ferdy Mayne. The title of the play suggested by Miss Claire is unknown, but Walbrook thanked her for the kind thought, adding: ‘It is a fine play but does not interest me as an actor – or shall I say as a [?] Viennese?’

Although I have many signed items in my collection, and numerous copies of AW’s letters from the 1920s through to the 1960s, this is the only original handwritten letter that I possess and one that I treasure.

For previous posts in the series of ‘Anton Artefacts’, see here and here. More should follow very soon!