Conrad Veidt

 

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was born on 22 January 1893^[5] in his parents' home at Tieckstraße 39 in Berlin^[6] to Amalie Marie (née Gohtz) and Philipp Heinrich Veidt, a former military man turned civil servant.^[7] Veidt would later recall, "Like many fathers, he was affectionately autocratic in his home life, strict, idealistic. He was almost fanatically conservative." By contrast, Amalie was sensitive and nurturing.^[8] Veidt was nicknamed "Connie", also spelled "Conny", by his family and friends. His family was Lutheran,^[8] and Veidt was baptized on 26 March 1893.^[9] He was later confirmed in a ceremony at the Protestant Evangelical Church in Alt-Schöneberg, Berlin, on 5 March 1908.^[10] Veidt's only sibling, an older brother named Karl, died in 1900 of scarlet fever at the age of 9.^[11] The family spent their summers in Potsdam.^[6]

Two years after Karl's death, Veidt's father fell ill and required heart surgery. Knowing that the family could not afford to pay the lofty fee that accompanied the surgery, the doctor charged only what the family could comfortably pay. Impressed by the surgeon's skill and kindness, Veidt vowed to "model my life on the man that saved my father's life" and he wished to become a surgeon. His hopes for a medical career were thwarted, though, when, in 1912, he graduated without a diploma and ranked 13th out of 13 pupils and became discouraged over the amount of study necessary for him to qualify for medical school.^[11]

A new career path for Veidt opened up in 1911 during a school Christmas play in which he delivered a long prologue before the curtain rose. The play was badly received, and the audience was heard to mutter, "Too bad the others didn't do as well as Veidt."^[11] Veidt began to study all of the actors he could and wanted to pursue a career in acting, much to the disappointment of his father, who called actors 'gypsies' and 'outcasts'.^{[citation needed]}

With the money he raised from odd jobs and the allowance his mother gave him, Veidt began attending Berlin's many theatres. He stood outside of the Deutsches Theater after every performance, waiting for the actors and hoping to be mistaken for one. In the late summer of 1912 he met a theatre porter who introduced him to actor Albert Blumenreich, who agreed to give Veidt acting lessons for six marks.^[12] He took 10 lessons before auditioning for Max Reinhardt, reciting Goethe's Faust. During Veidt's audition, Reinhardt looked out of the window the entire time. He offered Veidt a contract as an extra for one season's work, from September 1913 to August 1914 with a pay of 50 marks a month. During this time, he played bit parts as spear carriers and soldiers. His mother attended almost every performance.^[13] His contract with the Deutsches Theater was renewed for a second season, but by this time World War I had begun, and on 28 December 1914, Veidt enlisted in the Imperial German Army.

In 1915, he was sent to the Eastern Front as a non-commissioned officer and took part in the Battle of Warsaw. He contracted jaundice and pneumonia, and had to be evacuated to a hospital on the Baltic Sea. While recuperating, he received a letter from his girlfriend Lucie Mannheim, telling him that she had found work at the Front Theatre in Libau.^[14]

Intrigued, Veidt applied for the theatre as well. As his condition had not improved, the army allowed him to join the theatre so that he could entertain the troops. While performing at the theatre, his relationship with Mannheim ended. In late 1916, he was re-examined by the Army and deemed unfit for service; he was given a full discharge on 10 January 1917. Veidt returned to Berlin where he was readmitted to the Deutsches Theater.^{[15][16][17][18]} There, he played a small part as a priest that got him his first rave review, the reviewer hoping that "God would keep Veidt from the films" or "God save him from the cinema!"^[6]

 

From 1917 until his death, Veidt appeared in more than 100 films. One of his earliest performances was as the murderous somnambulist Cesare in director Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a classic of German Expressionist cinema, with Werner Krauss and Lil Dagover. His starring role in The Man Who Laughs (1928), as a disfigured young outcast servant whose face is cut into a permanent grin, provided the (visual) inspiration for the iconic Batman villain the Joker. Veidt starred in other silent horror films such as The Hands of Orlac (1924), also directed by Robert Wiene, The Student of Prague (1926) and Waxworks (1924), in which he played Ivan the Terrible. Veidt also appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919), one of the earliest films to sympathetically portray homosexuality, although the characters in it do not end up happily.^[19] He had a leading role in Germany's first talking picture, Das Land ohne Frauen (Land Without Women, 1929).

 

He moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s and made a few films there, but the advent of talking pictures and his difficulty with speaking English led him to return to Germany.^[20] During this period, he lent his expertise to tutoring aspiring performers, one of whom was the later American character actress Lisa Golm.

 

Veidt opposed the Nazi regime and later contributed funds for the relief of Britons during the German Blitz bombings.^[21][22] Soon after the Nazi Party took power in Germany, by March 1933, Joseph Goebbels was purging the film industry of political opponents and Jews. In April 1933, a week after Veidt's marriage to Ilona Prager, a Jewish woman, also known as "Lilli" or "Lily", the couple emigrated to Britain before any action could be taken against either of them.

Goebbels had imposed a "racial questionnaire" in which everyone employed in the German film industry had to declare their "race" to continue to work. When Veidt was filling in the questionnaire, he answered the question about his Rasse (race) by writing Jude (Jew).^[23] Veidt was not Jewish, but his wife was, and Veidt would neither renounce the woman he loved nor collaborate with the regime as many others did.^[23]

Veidt was opposed to antisemitism and showed solidarity with the German Jewish community, who were being stripped of their rights as German citizens in the spring of 1933. Veidt had been informed that if he divorced and declared support for the new regime, he could continue to act in Germany. Several other leading actors unsympathetic to the Nazis before 1933 switched allegiances. In answering the questionnaire by stating he was a Jew, Veidt rendered himself unemployable in Germany, but stated this sacrifice was worth it as there was nothing in the world that would compel him to break with his wife.^[23] Goebbels remarked that he would never act in Germany again. He was put under house arrest on Goebbels' orders after he voiced his wishes to act in the British film Jew Süss only after a diplomatic intervention on behalf of the British government was he allowed to leave. The German newspaper Völkischer Beobachter "wrote on this in 1933 that "It is known that the Jewish film production in England produced two coarse, sensational films for purposes of Jewish propaganda: the film Wandering Jew and a second film - Jud Süss. [...] Conrad Veidt plays leading roles in both. [...] Conrad Veidt was paid for this betrayal of his country – by the praise of the Jewish public. As such, he no longer possesses enough human dignity that even one single person should utter a word of praise for him."

 

After arriving in Britain, Veidt improved his English and starred in the original anti-Nazi versions of The Wandering Jew (1933) and Jew Süss (1934). The latter film was directed by the exiled German-born director Lothar Mendes and produced by Michael Balcon for Gaumont-British. He naturalised as a British subject on 25 February 1939.^[24] By this point multi-lingual, Veidt made films both in French with expatriate French directors and in English, including three of his best-known roles for British director Michael Powell in The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

 

 

By 1941, he and Ilona had settled in Hollywood to assist in the British effort in making American films that might persuade the then-neutral and still isolationist United States to join the war against the Nazis, who at that time controlled all of continental Europe and were bombing the United Kingdom. Before leaving the UK, the Veidts gave a large portion of their life savings to the British government to help finance the war effort, and then provided an American home for an English child for the duration of the war.^[19][25] Realizing that Hollywood would most likely typecast him in Nazi roles, he had his contract mandate that they must always be villains.^[19]

He starred in a few films, such as George Cukor's A Woman's Face (1941), where he received billing under Joan Crawford, and Nazi Agent (1942), in which he had a dual role as both an aristocratic German Nazi spy and the man's twin brother, an anti-Nazi American. His best-known Hollywood role was as the sinister Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1942), a film which began pre-production before the United States entered World War II. Commenting about this well-received role, Veidt noted that it was an ironical twist of fate that he was praised "for portraying the kind of character who had forced him to leave his homeland".^[26]

Ivan J. Rado, the nephew of Veidt's third wife Lily, commented:

The fact that he wanted to leave Hollywood had nothing to do with anything but his disgust at the parts offered him, which was mainly Nazis. In Above Suspicion, he is at some rally, and when at the end everyone goes "Heil", he just very casually half lifts his right hand, more in a wave than a salute, and with an ironic smile on his face, which to me, embodies his feelings. ... The fact that he left Germany ... was his disgust at what was happening that made him move to London with Lily.^[27]

Veidt enjoyed sports, gardening, swimming, golfing, classical music, and reading fiction (including occultism; Veidt once considered himself a powerful medium) and nonfiction.

 

On 10 June 1918, Veidt married Gussy Holl, a cabaret entertainer.^[28][29] They had first met at a party in March 1918, and Conrad described her to friends as "very lovely, tall, dignified and somewhat aloof". They separated in 1919 but attempted to reconcile multiple times.^[30] Holl and Veidt divorced in 1922.

Veidt said of Holl, "She was as perfect as any wife could be. But I had not learnt how to be a proper husband," and "I was elated by my success in my work, but shattered over my mother's death, and miserable about the way my marriage seemed to be foundering. And one day when my wife was away, I walked out of the house, and out of her life, trying to escape from something I could put no name to." Holl later told Françoise Rosay, "I excused a lot of his failings and whims because I loved him. But one day he did something to me that I couldn't forgive. I was singing that evening at the cabaret. I left him home and he told me: 'I invited a few friends; we'll dine while we wait for you.' And it just so happened I had received a new dress from Paris. That evening, after work, I arrived home and what do I see? All these gentlemen dressed as women. And Conrad had put on my Paris dress. At this point, I divorced!"^[31]

Veidt's second wife, Anna Maria "Felizitas" Radke,^[32] was from an aristocratic Austrian family.^[33] They met at a party in December 1922 or at a Charleston dance competition in 1923.^[34] Radke divorced her husband for him, and they married on 18 April 1923. Their daughter, Vera Viola Maria, nicknamed "Kiki" and also known as "Viola", was born on 10 August 1925. Conrad was not present at her birth due to being in Italy working on The Fiddler of Florence, but took the first train to Berlin and wept as he met mother and child at the hospital; he was so hysterical from joy they had to sedate him and keep him in the hospital overnight.

Emil Jannings was Viola's godfather and Elisabeth Bergner was her godmother. She was named after one of Bergner's signature characters, Shakespeare's Viola. The birth of his daughter helped Veidt move on from the death of his mother, who had died of a heart condition in January 1922.^[35]

From September 1926 to 1929 Veidt lived with his wife and daughter in a Spanish-style house in Beverly Hills.^[6] Veidt enjoyed relaxing and playing with his daughter in their home, and enjoyed the company of the immigrant community, including F. W. Murnau, Carl Laemmle, and Greta Garbo, as well as the American Gary Cooper. The family returned to Germany in 1929, and moved several times afterwards, including a temporary relocation to Vienna, Austria, while Veidt participated in a theatrical tour of the continent.

Radke and Veidt divorced in 1932, with Radke saying the frequent relocations and the separations necessitated by Veidt's acting schedule frayed their marriage. Radke at first granted custody of their daughter to Veidt, but after further consideration he decided that their daughter needed the full-time parent. Conrad received generous visitation rights, and Viola called her summer vacations with her father "The Happy Times". She stayed with him three or four months of the year until the outbreak of World War II.^[36][33]

Viola passed away on 2 February 2004 in New Orleans, Louisiana in the U.S.

Veidt last married Flora Ilona Barta Greger,^[37][38] a Hungarian Jew also known as "Lilli" or "Lily", in Berlin 24 March 1933. They remained together until his death. The two had met at a club in Berlin.^[39]

Veidt said of Lilli in an October 1934 interview with The Sunday Dispatch,

Lilli was the woman I had been seeking all my life. For her I was the man. In Lilli I found the miracle of a woman who had all to give that I sought, the perfect crystallisation in one lovely human being, of all my years of searching. Lilli had the mother complex too. But in the reverse ratio to mine. In her, the mother instinct was so powerful that she poured it out, indiscriminately almost, on everyone she knew. She mothers her own mother. Meeting Lilli was like coming home to an enchanted place one had always dreamed of, but never thought to reach. For her it was the same. Our marriage is not only flawless, it is a complete and logical union, as inevitable as daybreak after night, as harmonious and right as the words that exactly fit the music. My search is finished. The picture in my mind of my mother is of a woman great and holy. But it is a picture clear and distinct, a deep and humble memory of a woman no one could replace; but now it is not blurred by the complex which before had harassed my mind.

Veidt and Lilli moved from London to Los Angeles, arriving on 13 June 1940. They resided at 617 North Camden Drive in Beverly Hills.^[40]

Even after leaving England, Veidt was concerned over the plight of children cooped up in London air raid shelters, and he decided to try to cheer up their holiday. Through his lawyers in London, Veidt donated enough money to purchase 2,000 one-pound tins of candy, 2,000 large packets of chocolate, and 1,000 wrapped envelopes containing presents of British currency. The gifts went to children of needy families in various air raid shelters in the London area during Christmas 1940. The air raid shelter marshal wrote back to Veidt thanking him for the gifts. Noting Veidt's unusual kindness, he stated in his letter to him, "It is significant to note that, as far as is known to me, you are the only member of the Theatrical Profession who had the thought to send Christmas presents to the London children."^[41]

Veidt smuggled his parents-in-law from Austria to neutral Switzerland, and in 1935 he managed to get the Nazi government to let his ex-wife Radke and their daughter move to Switzerland.^[42] He also offered to help Felizitas' mother, Frau Radke, of whom he was fond, leave Germany. However, she declined. A proud, strong-willed woman who was attached to her home country, she declared that "no damned little Austrian Nazi corporal" was going to make her leave her home. She reportedly survived the war, but none of the Veidts ever saw her again.^[41]

Veidt was perhaps bisexual. During his youthful career in the decadent Weimar Republic cabaret-era he was part of the avant-garde, experimental artists' lifestyle, even cross-dressing.^[43][44]

Rado, while having a family interest, commented with insights consistent with the record available:

... there are a few facts that I would like to share with everyone interested.

Aside from his work, which was also his life, there is little to know about Conny; he was an intensely private man who loved his home and his friends, but did not carouse in public nor was prey to scandalous behavior.

In his work, he was intense and generous, the consummate professional. ...

Early on he saw what was happening in Germany, and moved to London, where he did some important work in movies. He was not a political person, and was certainly not to be caught out on religious themes. The fact that his wife was Jewish meant nothing to him; they loved each other and loved being together. He was always honest, totally straight forward and kind.^[45]

Shirley Conway, in her 1993 tribute, also comments, consistent with other reports of the man being somewhat different from the screen image, that "Veidt surprised and delighted everyone with his modesty and ineffable charm."^{[46][full citation needed]}

He showed fondness and respect for women. In a 1941 interview he said,

There are two different kinds of men. There are the men men, what do you call them, the man's man, who likes men around, who prefers to talk with men, who says the female can never be impersonal, who takes the female lightly, as playthings. I do not see a man like that in my mirror. Perhaps, it is because I think the female and the male attract better than two men, that I prefer to talk with females. I do. I find it quite as stimulating and distinctly more comfortable. I have a theory about this – it all goes back to the mother complex. In every woman, the man who looks may find – his mother. The primary source of all his comfort. I think also that females have become too important just to play with. When men say the female cannot discuss impersonally, that is no longer so. When it is said that females cannot be geniuses, that is no longer so, either. The female is different from the male. Because she was born to be a mother. There is no doubt about that. But that does not mean that, in some cases, she is not also born a genius. Not all males are geniuses either. And among females today there are some very fine actresses, very fine; fine doctors, lawyers, even scientists and industrialists. I see no fault in any female when she wears slacks, smokes (unless it is on the street, one thing, the only thing, which I don't like), when she drives a car ... when men say things like "I bet it is a woman driving" if something is wrong with the car ahead – no, no. These are old, worn out prejudices, they do not belong in today.^[47]

In the 1930s, Veidt learned that he had a heart condition which had killed his mother; the condition was aggravated by his chain smoking, and Veidt took nitroglycerin tablets. He died of a heart attack on 3 April 1943 while playing golf at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles with singer Arthur Fields and his personal physician.^[48][42][19]

The Conrad Veidt Society (CVS) was formed in 1990 to commemorate his 1993 centennial of birth and then to find a final home for the Veidt ashes, which Lily Veidt's nephew Ivan Rado had given to the society's founder James H. Rathlesberger along with Veidt family papers and memorabilia.^[49] An earlier German-based Conrad Veidt Society had become inactive some years before the US-based society began.

The CVS motto "Courage Integrity Humanity" honored qualities the legendary film star exemplified while claiming to be "only an actor."

CVS supported 1993 retrospectives at the Internationale Filmfestspiele in Berlin, La Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, the Goethe Institute and British Film Institute's National Film Theatre in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York,^[50] as well as the Gay Museum in Berlin.^[51] CVS donated most of the Veidt materials to the University of California's Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.^[52] Among its efforts was a 650 Deutschmark/$450 contribution to the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek as seed money for SDK's Homage to Conrad Veidt film series held during the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival.

Two Veidt scrapbooks, his monogrammed silver cigarette case and gold Dunhill lighter went to the Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.^[53] Film, video and audio mix from a short film entitled "Conny" that Rado produced using memorabilia inherited from Lily was donated to the University of Southern California Max Kade Institute and UCLA Film & Television Archive.^[54] The PFA in Berkeley has a VHS tape of the film, as does the Max Kade Institute and the Ayn Rand Institute.^[55]

 

CVS reached out to German film officials who wished to receive the Veidt ashes but hesitated to act following controversies surrounding similar honors for Marlene Dietrich. After efforts stalled to take the Veidt ashes to Berlin, CVS raised funds for interment at Golders Green, close to where the Veidts had lived in London. Londoner Vivienne Phillips was instrumental in arranging this. On 3 April 1998, on the 55th anniversary of his passing, Veidt's ashes, mixed in the original urn with those of his wife Lily, were placed in a niche of the columbarium at the Golders Green Crematorium in north London. The ceremony drew attendees from two continents and was broadcast by BBC Radio 4.^[56][57][58]

• Alistair, Rupert (2018). "Conrad Veidt". The Name Below the Title: 65 Classic Movie Character Actors from Hollywood's Golden Age (softcover) (First ed.). Great Britain: Independently published. pp. 244–248. ISBN 978-1-7200-3837-5.
• Allen, Jerry C. (1993). Conrad Veidt, From Caligari to Casablanca. 2nd edition. Pacific Grove, CA: The Boxwood Press. ISBN 0-940168-27-8
• Battle, Pat Wilks (1993). "Conrad Veidt". Parts 1, 2 and 3. Films in Review, April (pp. 74–87), June (pp. 154–163) and August (pp. 234–241) 1993. New York: National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. ISSN 0015-1688
• Battle, Pat Wilks "Journey's End?, The Amazing Career of Conrad Veidt". Filmfax, Aug./Sept. 1999, No. 74, pp. 50–56, 89. Evanston, Illinois. ISSN 0895-0393
• Bowman, David K. "Conrad Veidt". Cult Movies, No. 29, 1999 (pp. 26-34). Hollywood, CA.
• 'Conway, Shirley. (1993). Conrad Veidt (1893–1943), A Tribute to "A Well Grac'd Actor". Self-published.
• Jay, Charles. (31 December 2022). "Hidden Film History: The antifa 'Casablanca' star who defied Goebbels for the Jewish woman he loved". Daily Kos.
• Soister, John T. (2002). Conrad Veidt's on Screen, A Comprehensive Illustrated Filmography, with a biography by Pat Wilks Battle. North Carolina: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-1289-5
• Schwientek, Sabine (2023). Conrad Veidt, Demon of the Silver Screen: His Life and Works in Context. North Carolina: McFarland & Co. ISBN 1476690812

•   Media related to Conrad Veidt at Wikimedia Commons
•   Works by or about Conrad Veidt at Wikisource
• Conrad Veidt at IMDb  
• Conrad Veidt at Turner Classic Movies
• Conrad Veidt at the British Film Institute^{[better source needed]}