- His decision to appear in the Nazi propaganda piece 'Jud Suess' (1940), led to Goebbels naming him an 'actor of the state' and appointing him vice president of the Reich Theatre Chamber. Though he claimed after the war to have been coerced into playing the part, he was convicted in court as a minor war criminal, fined and forced to move to Austria. This effectively curtailed his film career and thereafter, he only appeared occasionally on stage in Vienna until his rehabilitation to Germany in 1954.
- He was just thirty-five at the time he filmed Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but his heavy makeup made him seem older.
- Krauss was an unapologetic anti-Semite who supported the Nazi party and its ideology. In 1933 Krauss joined the Vienna Burgtheater ensemble to perform in Campo di Maggio (German: Hundert Tage), a drama written by Giovacchino Forzano together with Benito Mussolini, where-after he was received by the Italian dictator and also made the acquaintance of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
- Son of a postal worker, on stage from 1903, ten years later joining Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Film debut in 1914. Specialist in complex, obsessive or tortured characters. Became a key interpretor of villainy in the German expressionist silent cinema, noted for his bravura performances in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), as Jack-the-Ripper and Spring-heeled Jack in Waxworks (1924) and as the mephistophelean Scapinelli in The Student of Prague (1926).
- Adolf Hitler rated him as a cultural ambassador of Nazi Germany.
- Krauss died in relative obscurity in Vienna, Austria in 1959. He was cremated.
- He met with Joseph Goebbels who appointed him to the vice-president of the "Reichstheaterkammer" and Werner Krauss became established as in important culture representative of the NS regime.
- Krauss' consummate skills in characterization earned him the title of "the man with a thousand faces".[.
- In 1958, Krauss published his autobiography titled Das Schauspiel meines Lebens (The Play of my Life).
- He also played Shylock in Lothar Müthel's production of The Merchant of Venice staged at the Burgtheater in 1943.
- Only in 1951 he got back the German nationality and in 1954 he was rehabilitated for good with the award of the "Bundesverdienstkreuz".
- He attended from 1901 the teacher's college at Kreuzburg (Kluczbork). After it became known that he worked as an extra at the Breslau Lobe theatre, he was suspended from classes and decided to join a traveling theatre company.
- To his well-known movies in 30's and 40's belong "Yorck" (1931), "Robert Koch, der Bekämpfer des Todes" (1939), "Jud Süss" which is considered to be the most detrimental movie during the Nazi time, and "Paracelsus" (1943).
- After the war Werner Krauss was classified into the group of "less burden" by a "Spruchkammerverfahren". He went to Vienna where he got the Austrian nationality.
- In 1944, Krauss was added to the Gottbegnadeten-Liste, a list of important German artists, which exempted him from military service, including service on the home front.
- Because he got only smaller parts at the theater most of the time he turned to the film business in 1916 where he was usually employed as a villain or other unpleasant character.
- He was prominently featured in Paul Leni's Waxworks (1924), Ewald Andre Dupont's Varieté (1925), F.W. Murnau's Herr Tartüff, and The Student of Prague (1926). He still appeared on stage of the Deutsches Theater, 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 Köpenick, and guest performances even brought him to London and New York.
- If one is a patch on the great silent movie star Emil Jannings, then it was Werner Krauss. His expressiveness and acting intensity influenced the German movie of the 10's and 20's.
- He remained true to the theater just before his death.
- By the agency of Alexander Moissi, in 1913 he met the theatre director Max Reinhardt, who took Krauss to his Deutsches Theater in Berlin. However, Krauss initially only gained minor and secondary roles like King Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet or Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, wherefore after his military discharge as a midshipman of the Imperial German Navy in 1916 he also pursued a career as a film actor.
- Werner Krauss wasn't very important for the post-war film. More attention he got with his parts on the stage as ever.
- Krauss was born at the parsonage of Gestungshausen in Upper Franconia, where his grandfather was a Protestant pastor.
- After the end of World War I Werner Krauss managed the great leap forward to a theater and movie star. He realised his impressive breakthrough with the worldwide success "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari" (19) - a movie which belongs to the most important silent movies today. the following years he personified countless parts on a impressive way and he alway knew how to fascinate the audience.
- Werner Krauss attended the teacher seminar since from 1901 but was suspended from classes because of his occasional entrances as an extra at the Breslauer Lobe theater. As a result Werner Kraus decided to take the profession of an actor and got after smaller parts an engagement for the Reinhardt-Bühnen in 1913.
- In the '30s Werner Kraus came rarely up on the screen.
- In 1903 he debuted at the Guben municipal theatre and later played in Magdeburg, Bromberg (Bydgoszcz), at the Theater Aachen, in Nuremberg and Munich.
- In the second half of the '20s, Werner Krauss played in other important milestones of the German film history. Movies like "Die freudlose Gasse" (1925), "Der Student von Prag" (1926), and "Napoleon auf St. Helena" (1929) emphasized his important position in the film business.
- Krauss was appointed by Goebbels to be vice president of the Reichskulturkammer theatre department and served in that capacity from 1933 to 1935. In 1934, Krauss was designated as a Staatsschauspieler (i.e. an actor of national importance).
- After the war, Krauss was banned from performing on stage and in films in Germany. His films were proscribed and he was ordered to undergo a de-Nazification program from 1947 to 1948. Ultimately, he was rehabilitated to the extent of being invited to German film festivals.
- His heavy, declamatory technique was perfect for such roles as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1924) and Jack the Ripper in The Wax Works (1924).
- In 1954, he was awarded the Order of the Federal Republic of Germany; in 1955, he received the High Decoration of the Republic of Austria.
- He simultaneously played the roles of several stereotypical Jewish characters - among them Rabbi Loew and Sekretar Levy - in Veit Harlan's antisemitic propaganda film Jud Süß (1940), implementing Harlan's concept of a common Jewish root.
- Good roles were few and far between for Werner Krauss after the war, though he was "forgiven" to the extent of being invited to several German film festivals, where he elicited loud applause for such noncontroversial declarations as "I tell you my friends, the show-house is my life!".
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