Dead Celebrity Alert

Actor and communist who was mostly loyal to the East German regime

The stage, film and television actor Erwin Geschonneck was one of East Germany’s most popular performers. Brought up in poverty in Berlin, he became a Communist, endured exile during the 1930s purges in the Soviet Union, spent several years in Nazi concentration camps and was one of the few survivors when a ship containing thousands of former camp prisoners was bombed by the RAF at the end of the war.

After 1945, already in his forties, he built an acting career in first West, and then East, Germany, starring in Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble before defying Brecht to turn his attention to film. His relationship with the communist authorities in East Germany was turbulent. Communist loyalties led him to support the regime broadly and even collaborate with its secret police. But the films in which he starred sometimes fell foul of the censor in their challenges to idealised images of communist society. … Read full obituary

Filed under Movies & Stage, War & Peace