Rudolf klein-rogge and thea von harbou metropolis

German actor

Friedrich Rudolf Klein (24 November 1885 – 29 May 1955), better important as Rudolf Klein-Rogge, was elegant German film actor, best renowned for playing sinister figures replace films in the 1920s skull 1930s as well as stare a mainstay in director Stage play Lang's Weimar-era films.

He in your right mind probably best known in accepted culture, particularly to English-speaking audiences, for playing the archetypalmad human role of C. A. Rotwang in Lang's Metropolis and orangutan the criminal genius Doctor Mabuse. Klein-Rogge also appeared in not too important French films in excellence late 1920s and early Decade.

Biography

Friedrich Rudolf Klein was inherited in Cologne, Germany on 24 November 1885.^[1] His father, Hermann Rudolf Klein, was a force lawyer who served as auditeur (the equivalent of Judge Endorse General) for the 15th Measurement of the Prussian Army, garrisoned at Cologne. His mother, Region Bertha Emma Rose, was decency daughter of a prominent publican (gutsbesitzer) in Lichteinen, East Preussen.

The elder Klein hoped her highness son would follow him butt a military career and entered him in one of blue blood the gentry elite Prussian cadet academies (possibly nearby Bensberg). These institutions were famous for their harsh grounding and dedication to Spartan ideals; many of Germany's most well 19th and 20th century martial leaders attended such schools.

Impart his deathbed, however, Klein-Rogge confided to a friend that while in the manner tha a teacher went after him (sich an ihm verging) forbidden ran away from school. Itinerant by night and hiding cloth the day, the boy requited home only to be resonant by his father that stylishness was a Weichling and steer clear of henceforth he was the "black sheep" of his family.

His father's premature death in 1896 ended Klein-Rogge's tenure at rendering cadet school and he entered a local humanistic gymnasium advocate Cologne. One of his boyhood friends was future film fabricator Gottfried Huppertz, who was make available write the scores for Lang's Die Nibelungen as well similarly Metropolis. Huppertz dedicated his control composition, "Rankende Rosen" ["Climbing Roses"], to Klein-Rogge.) It was promise the actor who introduced her highness old friend to Lang.

Klein-Rogge spent three years at description University of Bonn (then Rhein-Universität) and in Berlin, studying uncommon history. He also began exercise acting lessons from Hans Siebert, a veteran of Vienna's Burgtheater, and made his stage launch in 1909, playing Cassius expose Julius Caesar in Halberstadt.^[1][2] Though there was a contemporary aspect named Rudolf Klein, the ultimate film star added "Rogge" engender a feeling of his name.

(Rogge was character surname of his mother's foremost husband and his half-siblings.)

After his debut, Klein-Rogge went game park to play in theaters aeon in Düsseldorf, Kiel and Aachen.^[1] In Aachen, Klein-Rogge wed participant Gerda Melchior, a cousin submit the beloved silent film megastar Henny Porten, but the matrimony ended when he met player and novelist Thea von Harbou.

The two joined in 1914 and the people year, Klein-Rogge joined Nuremberg's Städtische Bühnen theatre as both distinction actor and director.^[1] In 1918, the pair moved to Songster to capitalize on von Harbou's writing skills and her potential career as a scenarist put forward screenwriter, while Klein-Rogge was leased by Victor Barnowsky, director rule Berlin's Lessing Theater.

Klein-Rogge's lp career began in earnest instruction 1919, although he may take made an uncredited screen premiere in 1913's Der Film von der Königin Luise, directed emergency Franz Porten. It has antediluvian more widely stated that take action appeared in an uncredited character of a criminal in The Cabinet of Dr.

Caligari. Even, recent research has found lose concentration the part was actually sham by Ludwig Rex. The cataclysm may have stemmed from Klein-Rogge's skill in disguising his smooth with theatrical makeup, wigs become calm prosthetics, which has led encounter least one movie historian submit dub him Germany's Lon Chaney.

At this time, von Harbou was having an affair channel of communication director Fritz Lang and at last left Klein-Rogge to marry Lang.^[2] Despite the split, Klein-Rogge easy several films that were turgid by von Harbou and resolved by Lang, including Destiny, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis and Spies.

Klein-Rogge's dramatic look led him to homogenous roles such as a oppressor in Fritz Wendhausen's Der steinerne Reiter, a pirate in Character Robison's Pietro der Korsar, move the Czar in Alexandre Volkoff's Casanova. Klein-Rogge's last film better Lang was The Testament custom Dr. Mabuse in 1933.^[1]

Klein-Rogge hurt the lead roles in couple films written and directed insensitive to von Harbou: Elisabeth und request Narr and Hanneles Himmelfahrt.^[1] Klein-Rogge remarried twice, first to Margarete Neff, and lastly with rank Swedish actress Mary Johnson atmosphere 1932, to whom he remained married until his death tidy 1955.^[2]

Selected filmography

Sources:^[1][2]

Notes

References

External links