Background

Emil Jannings was born in Rohrschach, Switzerland, on 23 July 1884. The son of an American-born father and a German mother. Jannings was raised in middle-class comfort.

Career

Ran away from home to become a sailor at the age of sixteen, two years later he decided to become a professional actor and began his stage career in 1906, appearing in Königsberg, Nuremberg and Leipzig. Discovered by the famous theatrical director Max Reinhardt, he was subsequently given parts at the Deutsches Theatre, emerging as one of the leading stage actors in Weimar. Powerfully built, with an enormous stage presence.

Jannings's film debut began in 1919 and his work extended to the end of the Third Reich, establishing him along with Heinrich George, Gustaf Gründgens and Werner Krauss as one of a quartet of outstanding movie actors whose careers survived the collapse of republican democracy in Germany. In the 1920s Jannings starred in a number of important and influential films.

He was offered a contract with Paramount, but his thick German accent put an end to his Hollywood career with the advent of talking movies. He returned to Germany.

Made a Reichskultursenator, he was one of Hitler’s favourite film actors and was never short of work. In 1938 he was awarded a medal by Goebbels and appointed as head of Tobis, the company that produced his films.

In 1941 he was honoured as ‘Artist of the State’. The following year he played the part of Bismarck in Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s Die Entlassung.

Jannings died in Stroblhof, Austria, on 2 January 1950, a lonely and embittered man, having been blacklisted by the Allied authorities and prevented from exercising his profession after 1945.

Works

• film

  • Der Letzte Mann

    (He played the part of an old doorman of a great hotel, to...)

    1924

  • Der Blaue Engel

    (Where he superbly portrayed Professor Rath, the pompous s...)

    1930

  • Variété

    (Played the circus acrobat. The film, which so impressed H...)

    1925

  • Way of all Flesh

    1927

  • The Last Command

    1928

  • Robert Koch

    1939

  • Ohm Kruger

    1941

Politics

Though never a Party member, Jannings became an enthusiastic supporter of Nazi ideology after 1933 and one of the leading actors and producers in the Third Reich, gladly accepting roles in anti-British and other propaganda films.