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Introduction
 ans Walter Conrad Veidt was born in his parents' residence at Tieckstrasse 39 in a modest working-class neighborhood of Berlin on January 22, 1893. A little over 50 years later, on April 3, 1943, the avid golfer died of a heart attack while playing his favorite game on the Riviera Country Club golf course in Los Angeles.
Although he died some 60 years ago, Veidt's life story has yet to be fully and accurately documented, especially in English. Jerry C. Allen made a good start with his 1987 “affectionate tribute” to the German actor, Conrad Veidt: From Caligari to Casablanca, (updated in 1993). Although John Soister's more recent Conrad Veidt on Screen (2002) contains a biography (by Pat Brattle), Allen's 1993 book remains the only book-length biography of Veidt ever published in English. Even the German Conrad Veidt: Lebensbilder (1993) is now out of print. Shorter publications and articles have appeared from time to time, but even the latest edition of the respected Katz Film Encyclopedia, in its brief biographical sketch of Veidt, incorrectly states that he was born in Potsdam.
Until Conrad Veidt: Lebensbilder was published in 1993 by the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, with its wealth of photos and commentary from Veidt's time, the only books about the actor in German were dated 1927 and 1933 respectively. In part this is because Veidt was labeled a traitor and considered a non-person in Nazi-controlled Germany. Although highly respected elsewhere, he died in exile before the end of World War II and, but for a few devoted fans, was soon forgotten on both sides of the Atlantic.
That is an ironic fact when one realizes what a popular star Veidt had been in silents and talkies in a career spanning several decades. Contemporary movie fan magazines in Germany, England, and America documented his great popularity during the silent era and later, particularly in England and America. From about 1920 and continuing into the '40s, Conrad Veidt was a household name on both sides of the Atlantic. At the time of his death in 1943, Veidt was better known than many other Hollywood stars of the time.
In the five decades between his birth in Berlin and his death in Los Angeles, Conrad Veidt enjoyed a varied acting career on both stage and screen. He had begun his illustrious acting career modestly in Berlin playing a minor role on the stage of Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in 1913.
CONRAD VEIDT'S THREE MARRIAGES:
(1) Auguste ("Gussy") Marie Holl of Berlin
Married 18 June 1918 (Berlin), divorced 1919
Holl later married the German actor Emil Jannings.
(2) Felizitas Anna Maria Lüttgau of Vienna
Married 18 April 1923 (Berlin), divorced 4 July 1932
(3) Ilona ("Lilli") Preger, nee Barta of Hungary
Married 24 March 1933 (Berlin)
Exile in Life
Veidt spent most of his life in Berlin. As a boy, he spent parts of the summers in nearby Potsdam. As a young man he attended the Sophiengymnasium (secondary school) in the Schöneberg district of Berlin. (Ernst Lubitsch, later a famous Hollywood director, attended the same school. Lubitsch died only four years after his former schoolmate.) A poor student, Veidt completed his senior year in 1912 without receiving a diploma. (He was last in his class of 13.) But within a year of leaving school Veidt was able to finagle his way into appearing in Shaw's “The Doctor's Dilemma” (“Der Arzt am Scheideweg”) at Berlin's prestigious Deutsches Theater. He was soon a regular on Berlin's stages, but his budding career would be derailed by the outbreak of war in 1914.
World War I proved only a brief interruption in Veidt's acting career. Although he was drafted into the German army at the end of December 1914 and soon sent to the eastern front, Veidt later contracted jaundice and was put in a hospital. After his recovery he managed to get back into acting again, this time in the so-called “front theaters” in Tilsit and in Libau. The great variety of dramatic productions common in the front theaters proved to be good basic training for Veidt's future thespian career. Veidt later praised his “front” theater director in Libau, Josef Dischner, for his help and encouragement.
Veidt was declared “unfit for active duty” in 1916 and returned to his beloved Deutsches Theater and his mentor Max Reinhardt even before the war had ended. He was soon drawing the high praise of Berlin's demanding theater critics, one of whom remarked: “God save him from the cinema!” But although Veidt continued to act on the stage throughout his life, the cinema would dominate his advancing career.
Attracted by better money, Veidt began work on his first film at the Neubabelsberg studios of Deutsche Bioscop at the end of 1916. Only three years later he landed a key role in what has come to be considered an expressionist classic (and one of the world's first horror movies): The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) by German director Robert Wiene. Beginning what would eventually become a string of demonic roles in his career, Veidt played the zombie-like, sleep-walking murderer Cesare in that silent film.
It was not long before the name Conrad Veidt became familiar to movie audiences all over the world. Veidt eventually made over 100 movies in four major film capitals: Berlin, Paris, London, and Hollywood. On the next page we shall concentrate on the latter.
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Copyright © 1997-2005 Hyde Flippo
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