1. Werner Johannes Krauss was a German stage and film actor.
15 Facts About Werner Krauss
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Werner Krauss was born at the parsonage of Gestungshausen bei Sonnefeld in Upper Franconia, where his grandfather was a Protestant pastor.
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Werner Krauss spent his childhood in Breslau and from 1901 attended the teacher's college at Kreuzburg.
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Werner Krauss played the title role of Shakespeare's Othello in a 1920 adaption, and played Iago in a 1922 film adaptation.
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In 1922, Werner Krauss played the noble Jewish hero in Nathan the Wise, based on the play by Lessing.
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In 1924 Werner Krauss continued his theatre career by joining the ensemble of the Prussian State Theatre in Berlin.
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Werner Krauss again appeared on stage of the Deutsches Theater from 1926, as in Strindberg's A Dream Play filling five roles or as Wilhelm Voigt in the 1931 premiere of Carl Zuckmayer's The Captain of Kopenick.
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Werner Krauss performed at the Vienna Burgtheater, and guest performances even brought him to London and on Broadway in New York City, where Max Reinhardt staged Karl Vollmoller's The Miracle in 1924.
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Werner Krauss was an unapologetic antisemite who supported the Nazi Party and its ideology.
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In 1944, Werner Krauss was added to the "Gottbegnadeten list" of indispensable German artists, which exempted him from military service in the Wehrmacht forces, including service on the home front.
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Werner Krauss was banned from performing on stage and in films in Germany.
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Werner Krauss's films were proscribed and he was ordered to undergo a denazification program from 1947 to 1948, whereafter he could return to Austria to become a naturalized citizen.
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In 1958, Werner Krauss published his autobiography titled Das Schauspiel meines Lebens.
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Werner Krauss died in relative obscurity in Vienna at the age of 75.
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Werner Krauss was cremated and buried in an Ehrengrab in the Vienna Zentralfriedhof.