Conrad Veidt

At 50 years old, Conrad Veidt has this physical status:

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt (22 January 1893 to 3 April 1943) was a German actor best known for his roles in films including Different from the Others (1919), The Cabinet of Dr. Gregor Veidt (1919).

Caligari (1920), The Man Who Laughs (1928), and The Man Who Laughs (1928).

After a fruitful career in German silent films, where he was one of the highest-paid actors of UFA, Ilona Prager and his young Jewish wife Ilona Prager were forced to leave Germany in 1933 after the Nazis took power.

They settled in the United Kingdom, where they appeared in a number of films, including The Thief of Bagdad (1940), before emigrating to the United States in 1941, which culminated in him playing Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942).

Early life

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was born in Berlin on January 22nd, 1893, in his parents' house at Tieckstraße 39, to Amalie Marie (née Gohtz) and Philipp Heinrich Veidt, a former military man and civil servant. Veidt would later recall, "He was devotedly autocratic in his home life, strict, idealistic." Amalie, on the other hand, was remarkably conservative. Veidt's family and friends referred to him as 'Connie.' He was Lutheran, and Veidt was baptized on March 26, 1893. He was later confirmed in a service at the Protestant Evangelical Church in Alt-Schöneberg, Berlin, on March 5, 1908. At the age of 9, Veidt's only sibling, an older brother named Karl, died of scarlet fever in 1900. The family lived in Potsdam for the summers.

Veidt's father became sick and required heart surgery two years after Karl's death. The doctor charged only what the family could afford to pay for the family's price associated with the operation, knowing that the family could not afford to pay the extravagant bill that came with the procedure. Veidt, who was captivated by the surgeon's talent and kindness, promised to "model my life on the man who saved my father's life" and wished to become a surgeon. However, his hopes of a medical career were thwarted when he graduated without a diploma in 1912 and ranked 13th out of 13 students, and became discouraged because of the amount of study required for him to enroll in medical school.

Veidt's new career path opened up in 1911 at a school Christmas production in which he gave a long prologue before the curtain rose. The performance was poorly received, and the audience was heard to mutter, "Too bad the others didn't do as well as Veidt." Veidt began to study all of the actors who might and wanted to pursue a career in acting, much to his father's chagrine over actors' 'gypsies' and "outcasts."

Veidt's many theaters opened in Berlin with the funds he earned from odd jobs and the allowance his mother gave him. After every performance, he loitered outside the Deutsche Theater, eager for the actors and hoping to be mistaken for one. He met a theatre porter who introduced him to actor Albert Blumenreich, who promised to teach Veidt acting lessons for six points in the late summer of 1912. Before auditioning for Max Reinhardt, he took ten lessons from him, reciting Goethe's Faust. Reinhardt was out of the window the entire time during Veidt's audition. Veidt was offered a monthly salary from September 1913 to August 1914, earning him a one-month of work. He appeared as spear carriers and soldiers during this period. His mother attended almost every performance. Veidt's contract with the Deutsche Theater had been renewed for a second season, but by this time, World War I had begun, and Veidt had enlisted in the army on December 28th.

He was sent as a non-commissioned officer on the Eastern Front in 1915 and was active in the Battle of Warsaw. He had jaundice and pneumonia and was requiring to be evacuated to a hospital on the Baltic Sea. Lucie Mannheim, his girlfriend, told him that she had found work at the Front Theatre in Libau while recuperating. Veidt, an enthralled teenager, applied for the theatre as well. The army accepted him to join the theatre so that he would entertain the troops as his health worsened. Mannheim's friendship with him came to an end while performing at the theatre. He was re-examined by the Army and deemed unfit for service in late 1916, and deemed unfit for service in late 1916; he was discharged with full terms on January 10th. Veidt was recalled to Berlin and redirected to the Deutsche Theater in Berlin. He appeared on a small part as a priest in his first rave review, and the writer was hoping that "God will save Veidt from the films."

or "God save him from the cinema!"

Personal life

Veidt loved sports, gardening, swimming, golfing, classical music, and reading fiction and nonfiction (including occultism; Veidt once considered himself a natural medium). He was afraid of heights and flying, and he disliked interviews and wearing ties.

Veidt said in a September 1941 interview with Silver Screen, Veidt said, "it was never in a September 1941 interview with them."

He went on:

Veidt married Gussy Holl, a cabaret entertainer, on June 10, 1918. Conrad's mother appeared at a party in March 1918 and she was described as "very lovely, tall, dignified, and a little aloof." They separated in 1919 but tried to reconcile several times. In 1922, Holl and Veidt divorced.

"She was as flawless as any wife could be," Veidt said of Holl. "I was elated by my work, but I was devastated by my mother's death, and I was angry about how my marriage seemed to be beginning." "I walked out of the house and out of her life one day, trying to get out of something I could not put no word to." "I excused a lot of his failures and whims because I loved him," Holl told Françoise Rosay. But there was one day when he did something to me that I couldn't accept. I was singing at the cabaret the evening before. I left him home and he told me, 'I invited a few people; we'll dine while waiting for you.' And it just so happened that I had received a new dress from Paris. I returned home after work on Saturday evening, and what do I see? These gentlemen were dressed as women. And I had on my Paris outfit.

At this point, I divorced!"

Anna Maria "Felizitas" Radke, Veidt's second wife, was a descendant of an aristocratic Austrian family. They were at a Christmas party in December 1922 or at a Charleston dance competition in 1923. Radke divorced her husband for him, and the couple married on April 18, 1923. Vera Viola Maria Maria Maria, their daughter, was born on August 10, 1925. He was not present at her birth due to being in Italy on The Fiddler of Florence, but he started to weep at the first train to Berlin and bled, but they had to sedate him and keep him in the hospital overnight; 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, and she was her godmother. Viola, one of Bergner's signature characters, was named after her. Veidt's daughter's birth helped him recover from his father's death, who had died of a heart disease in January 1922.

Veidt lived in Beverly Hills, California, from 1926 to 1929.

Veidt enjoyed relaxing and playing with his daughter in their house, and he loved the immigrant community, including F. W. Murnau, Carl Laemmle, and Greta Garbo, as well as American Gary Cooper. The family returned to Germany in 1929 and subsequently moved around Vienna, Austria, with a temporary relocation, while Veidt appeared on a European tour of the continent.

In 1932, Radke and Veidt married, with Radke citing that Veidt's frequent relocations and separations were exacerbated by their separation. Radke at first granted custody of their daughter to Veidt, but after further consideration, they discovered that their daughter did not have to be anywhere because his job did not allow him to be. Conrad was given generous visitation rights, and Viola called her summer vacations with her dad "The Happy Times." She stayed with him for three to four months of the year until the outbreak of World War II.

Flora Ilona "Lilli" Barta Greger, a Hungarian Jew, married him in Berlin on March 24; the two remained close until his death. The two people met at a Berlin club. In an October 1934 interview with The Sunday Dispatch, Veidt said of Lilli.

Veidt and Lilli went from London to Los Angeles on June 13, 1940, and they arrived in London on June 13. They lived in Beverly Hills, 617 North Camden Drive.

Even after leaving England, Veidt was worried about the lives of children cooped up in London air raid shelters, and he decided to celebrate their holiday. Veidt's lawyers in London raised enough money to buy 2,000 one-pound tins of candy, 2,000 large packets of chocolate, and 1,000 wrapped envelopes containing British currency gifts. During Christmas 1940, the gifts were given to children of needy families in various air raid shelters in the London area. The air raid marshal wrote back to Veidt thanking him for the gifts. In his letter to Veidt, he expressed surprise, "It is important to note that, as far as is known to me, you are the only one of the Theatrical Profession who has the intention to give Christmas gifts to the London children."

Veidt smuggled his parents-in-law from Austria to neutral Switzerland in 1935, and the Nazi government allowed his ex-wife Radke and their daughter to migrate to Switzerland. He also offered to support Felizitas' mother, Frau Radke, of whom he was a fan, from Germany. However, she declined. A proud, strong-willed woman who was attached to her home country declared that "no deserving little Austrian Nazi corporal" would force her to leave her home. According to reports, she survived the war, but no one of the Veidts ever saw her again.

Veidt was bisexual and a feminist.

In a 1941 interview he said,

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Career

Veidt appeared in more than 100 films from 1917 to his death. In director Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a German Expressionist cinema masterpiece with Werner Krauss and Lil Dagover, one of his earliest appearances was as the murderous somnambulist Cesare. The iconic Batman villain The Man Who Laughs (1928), as a disfigured young outcast servant whose face is cut into a permanent grin, provided the (physical) inspiration for the legendary Batman villain the Joker. Veidt appeared in several silent horror films, including The Hands of Orlac (1924), Robert Wiene's The Student of Prague (1926) and Waxworks (1924), in which he played Ivan the Terrible. Veidt appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's film Anders als Die Andern (Different from Others, 1919), one of the first films to sympathetically portray homosexuality, although the characters in it do not end up happily. He was one of the leading figures in Germany's first talking picture, Das Land Without Women (Land Without Women, 1929).

In the late 1920s, he made a few films there, but the introduction of talking pictures and his difficulty in speaking English led him to his return to Germany. During this period, he lent his experience to mentoring aspiring artists, one of whom was later American character actress Lisa Golm.

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