Werner Krauss

German stage and film actor.

In 1903 Krauss debuted at the Guben municipal theatre and later played in Magdeburg, Bromberg (Bydgoszcz), at the Theater Aachen, in Nuremberg and Munich.

By the agency of Alexander Moissi, in 1913 he met the noted theatre director Max Reinhardt, who took Krauss to his Deutsches Theater in Berlin. However, Krauss initially only got minor and secondary roles like King Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet or Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, wherefore after his military discharge as a midshipman of the German Navy in 1916 he also pursued a career as a film actor.

Committed to playing sinister characters, Krauss became a worldwide sensation for his demonic portrayal of the titular character in Robert Wiene's 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. He also played the title role ofWilliam Shakespeare's Othello in a 1920 adaption, and played Iago in a 1922 adaptation.

Krauss' consummate skills in characterization earned him the title of "the man with a thousand faces".

Krauss was an unabashed anti-Semite who supported the Nazi party and its ideology. In 1933 Krauss joined the Vienna Burgtheater ensemble to perform in Campo di Maggio (German: Hundert Tage), a drama written by Giovacchino Forzano together with Benito Mussolini, whereafter he was received by the Italian dictator and also made the acquaintance of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Krauss was appointed by Goebbels to be vice president of the Reichskulturkammer theatre department and served in that capacity from 1933 to 1935. In 1934, Krauss was designated as a Staatsschauspieler (i.e. an actor of national importance).Adolf Hitler rated him as a cultural ambassador of Nazi Germany.

Werner Krauss was banned from performing on stage and in films in Germany. He was required to undergo a de-Nazification process from 1947 to 1948. Ultimately, he was rehabilitated to the extent of being invited to German film festivals.