Background

Ethnicity: Goetz's father, Bernhard Alexander Heinrich Werner Goetz, was Swiss, and his mother, Selma Rocco Goetz, German.

Curt Goetz was born Kurt Walter Götz, on November 17, 1888, in Mainz, Switzerland. He was the son of Bernhard Alexander Heinrich Wemer and Selma (Rocco) Goetz.

Education

Curt Goetz attended a Swiss gymnasium (the equivalent of an American high school) until the tenth grade, planning to become a doctor like his Swiss grandfather; however, it was impossible because of strained financial circumstances. He began taking acting lessons from Emanuel Reicher in Berlin.

Career

While taking acting lessons from Emanuel Reicher, Goetz was hired to act in Rostock’s Stadttheater (City Theater) in 1908, and then at the In times Theater in Nuremberg in 1909. Not long after, Goetz gained entry into what was then the cultural center of Germany, Berlin. There he joined the Kleines (Little) Theater in 1911 and the Lessing-Theater from 1913 to 1914.

Goetz began writing to supply himself with choice roles. He wanted the actors to look good on the stage and to be liked and admired by the audience. Goetz wrote with no artistic or political aspirations or affectations; his only goal was to entertain and to provide enjoyable roles. He often wrote himself and his wife into the leading roles.

Goetz bought a house on Lake Tun in Merligen, Switzerland, in 1925. There he wrote his play, Hokuspokus (1927). The play was so successful that Goetz was able to found his own touring acting company. In 1938, he produced Napoleon ist an allem schuld (“It’s All Napoleon's Fault”), a film he starred in, wrote and directed.

By 1939 Goetz was sufficiently concerned about the approaching war and the climate in Germany to emigrate to Hollywood, where he worked as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). He left the company and bought a chicken farm in Van Nuys. There he adapted Hokuspokus and Praetorius for an American audience and adapted Die tote Tante into the 1953 play Das Haus in Montevideo, oder Traugotts Versuchung: Eine Komoedie im alten Stil ueber Moral, Versuchung und Belohnung der Tugend in vier Akten frei nach der “Toten Tante’’.

Goetz returned to Europe in 1945, settling in Switzerland near Lake Thun. He premiered Das Haus in Montevideo at the Schauspielhaus in Zurich that October. He revived his European career and, as foreign literature became more popular in America, finally won recognition from Hollywood. He sold the rights to Praetorius to Twentieth Century-Fox, which produced it as the film People Will Talk. Goetz also wrote three autobiographies, Die Memoiren des Peterhans von Binningen (“The Memoirs of Peterhans von Binningen,” 1960), Die Verwandlung des Peterhans von Binningen: Der Memoiren zweiter Teil (“The Transformation of Peterhans von Binningen: Second Part of the Memoirs,” 1962) and Wir wandern, wir wandern (“We Wander, We Wander, 1963). The second and third memoirs were finished by his second wife and published posthumously. Goetz’s dramatic works were published in 1963 as Saemtliche Buehnenwerke (“Collected Plays”), including two previously unpublished plays.

Achievements

• Curt Goetz worked both in front of and behind the scenes as a film and theater actor, director, and playwright. His numerous and popular plays are mostly drawing-room comedies designed to take their audiences’ minds off the turmoil of his day. He mocked the political plays of his time and believed theater should only entertain. Most of his plays are light and witty, some are a little grotesque, and many were written for himself and his wife. Goetz also translated the work of other playwrights he admired, including Noel Coward, into German.
  
  Goetz won the Gutenberg Medal of the city of Mainz and was given the title of Professor by Prince Franz Joseph.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Tatjana: Eine Legende

    (This is the narrative of consuming love. Tatjana, a Russi...)

    1944
  • Nachtbeleuchtung. Fünf Grotesken 1926
  • Dr Med, Hiob Pratorius Menagerie 1919
  • Ingeborg 1922
  • Die Tote Tante Und Andere Begebenheiten 1924
  • Hokuspokus. Ein Reisser in Drei Akten. 1926
  • Dr. med. Hiob Prätorius. 1953
  • Das Haus in Montevideo der Lugner und Die Nonne 1945
  • Miniaturen 1958
  • Die Tote Von Beverly Hills 1951
  • Gesammelte Werke 1951
  • Ergoetzliches 1974
  • Sämtliche Bühnenwerke 1987

Politics

Goetz’s political neutrality protected him from Nazi oppression in the 1930s. He was among the few dramatic artists remaining in Germany at that time.

Membership

In 1958, Goetz was admitted to the Academy of Arts in West Berlin.

Personality

With the 1918 performance of Nachtbeleuchtung, a series of five one-act plays, Goetz secured his reputation as a virtuoso of the one-act genre. In many of his plays, Goetz places emphasis on witty and elegant dialogue, rather than on action. Goetz struggled with his insufficient English and fretted over the lack of respect - his reputation had not preceded him.

Connections

In 1914, Goetz married Ema Nitter, but they divorced in 1917, and Goetz married for the second time to Valerie von Martens, in 1923.

Father:

Bernhard Alexander Heinrich Wemer Goetz

Mother:

Selma (Rocco) Goetz

ex-wife:

Ema Nitter

Wife:

Valerie von Martens

References

• The Oxford Companion to German Literature This new edition of Mary and Henry Garland's classic Oxford Companion to German Literature substantially revises and extends its coverage, making an invaluable reference work available to a new generation of readers.
  1997