Albert Bassermann

Albert Bassermann (7 September 1867 – 15 May 1952) was a German stage and screen actor. He was considered to be one of the greatest German-speaking actors of his generation and received the famous Iffland-Ring. He was married to Elsa Bassermann with whom he frequently performed.

Albert Bassermann
Bassermann as "Van Meer" in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Born	7 September 1867 Mannheim, Germany
Died	15 March 1952 (aged 84) en route to Zurich, Switzerland
Occupation	Screen, stage actor
Years active	1887–1948
Spouse(s)	Elsa Bassermann ​ (m. 1908)​

Life and career

His grave in Mannheim

Bassermann began his acting career in 1887 in Mannheim, his birthplace, after he began to study chemistry at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in 1884/85. He then moved to Berlin. From 1899, he worked for Otto Brahm. He began work at the Deutsches Theater Berlin from 1904, the same year that his future wife, actress Elsa Bassermann, moved to Berlin to work at that same theater. In 1909, the year after they married, he started working at the Lessing Theatre, though he also continued at the Deutsches Theater, working there with Max Reinhardt from 1909 to 1915. Roles included Othello in 1910,[1] Faust Part II with Friedrich Kayssler in 1911,[2] Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and August Strindberg's The Storm with de:Gertrud Eysoldt in 1913.[3]

Bassermann was among the first German theatre actors who worked in film. In 1913, he played the main role of the lawyer in Max Mack's Der Andere (The Other), after the play by Paul Lindau. In 1915, he appeared in Egmont (play) with de:Victor Barnowsky at the de:Deutsches Künstlertheater. He also worked with German silent film directors Richard Oswald, Ernst Lubitsch, Leopold Jessner and Lupu Pick. In 1928 he appeared in the first staging of Carl Zuckmayer's Katharina Knie, and in November that year in Herr Lambertier by Verneuil[4] In 1933, Bassermann left Germany and lived in Switzerland,[5] then moved to the United States in 1938.

Annija Simsone, who played opposite Bassermann in the Neue Wiener Buehne Theater in the 1920s, wrote the following in her autobiography: "During the Hitler era, Bassermann did not perform in Germany, though Adolf Hitler personally held him in high regard; Elsa was Jewish. Bassermann was told that if he wanted to continue to perform in Germany, he would have to get divorced. He did not get divorced, but Elsa and he went to Switzerland instead."[5]

Although his ability to speak English was very limited, he learned lines phonetically with assistance from his wife and found work as a character actor. For his performance as the Dutch statesman Van Meer in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, Bassermann was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor in 1940. He returned to Europe in 1946. His final film appearance was in The Red Shoes.

In her acting textbook Respect for Acting, actress Uta Hagen said: "One of the finest lessons I ever learned was from the great German actor Albert Basserman. I worked with him as Hilde in The Master Builder by Ibsen. He was already past eighty but was as 'modern' in his conception of the role of Solness and in his techniques as anyone I've ever seen or played with. In rehearsals he felt his way with the new cast. (The role had been in his repertoire for almost forty years.) He watched us, listened to us, adjusted to us, meanwhile executing his actions with only a small part of his playing energy. At the first dress rehearsal, he started to play fully. There was such a vibrant reality to the rhythm of his speech and behavior that I was swept away by it. I kept waiting for him to come to an end with his intentions so that I could take my 'turn.' As a result, I either made a big hole in the dialogue or desperately cut in on him in order to avoid another hole. I was expecting the usual 'It's your turn; then it's my turn.' At the end of the first act I went to his dressing room and said, 'Mr. Basserman, I can't apologize enough, but I never know when you're through!' He looked at me in amazement and said, 'I'm never through! And neither should you be.'"

Death

Bassermann died on May 16, 1952, at or near the Zurich Airport, soon after his flight from the United States had arrived. He was 85.[6] He is buried in Mannheim.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1913	Der Andere	Dr. Hallers	The Other
	Der König	Provinzschauspieler
	Der letzte Tag	Professor Osterode
1914	Urteil des Arztes	Dr. Erwin Hofmüller
1917	Du sollst keine anderen Götter haben
	Der eiserne Wille	Hausierer David
	Herr und Diener
1918	Father and Son
	The Zaarden Brothers
	Doctor Schotte
	Lorenzo Burghardt
1919	Eine schwache Stunde
	Das Werk seines Lebens	Peter
1920	Die Duplizität der Ereignisse
	The Voice
	The Sons of Count Dossy	The Count/The Thief's Son
	Masks
	Dolls of Death
1921	Der Frauenarzt	Dr. Wolfgang Holländer
	The Nights of Cornelis Brouwer	Cornelis Brouwer
	Burning Country
	The Last Witness	Olaf Baggerson
	Die kleine Dagmar
1922	Frauenopfer	Graf	Women's Sacrifice
	The Loves of Pharaoh	Sothis
	Lucrezia Borgia	Pope Alexander VI
1923	The Man in the Iron Mask	Cardinal Mazarin	The Man with the Iron Mask
	Earth Spirit	Dr. Schoen
	Christopher Columbus	Columbus
	Old Heidelberg		The Student Prince
	Abenteuer einer Nacht
1924	Helena	Aisakos	Helen of Troy
1925	Letters Which Never Reached Him	Konsul Werner Gerling
	The Director General	Generaldirektor Herbert Heidenberg
1926	Professor Imhof
1929	Fräulein Else	Dr. Alfred Thalhof
	Napoleon at Saint Helena	Governor Hudson Lowe
1930	Alraune	Privy Councillor ten Brinken	Daughter of Evil
	Dreyfus	Col. Picquart	The Dreyfus Case
1931	1914	Count Bethmann-Hollweg
	A Woman Branded	Dr. Ringius
	Inquest	Dr. Konrad Bienert
	Kadetten	General von Seddin	Cadets
1932	The Golden Anchor	Piquoiseau
1933	Ein gewisser Herr Gran	Tschernikoff, Kunsthändler
1935	Last Love	Thomas Bruck
1939	Le Héros de la Marne	Col. von Gelow
1940	Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet	Dr. Robert Koch
	Foreign Correspondent	Van Meer	Nominated: Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
	Knute Rockne, All American	Father Julius Nieuwland
	A Dispatch from Reuters	Franz Geller
	Escape	Dr. Arthur Henning
	Moon Over Burma	Basil Renner
1941	A Woman's Face	Consul Magnus Barring
	The Great Awakening	Ludwig van Beethoven
	The Shanghai Gesture	Van Elst, The Commissioner
1942	Fly-by-Night	Dr. Storm
	Invisible Agent	Arnold Schmidt
	Desperate Journey	Dr. Ludwig Mather
	The Moon and Sixpence	Dr. Coutras
	Once Upon a Honeymoon	Gen. Borelski
	Reunion in France	General Hugo Schroeder
1943	Good Luck, Mr. Yates	Dr. Carl Hesser
	Madame Curie	Prof. Jean Perot
1944	Since You Went Away	Dr. Sigmund Gottlieb Golden
1945	The Captain from Köpenick	Wilhelm Voigt, a shoemaker	I Was a Criminal
	Strange Holiday	School Principal	The Day After Tomorrow; uncredited
	Rhapsody in Blue	Prof. Franck
1946	The Searching Wind	Count von Stammer
1947	The Private Affairs of Bel Ami	Jacques Rival
	Escape Me Never	Prof. Heinrich
1948	The Red Shoes	Sergei Ratov	Final film role

See also

• List of German-speaking Academy Award winners and nominees

References

1. Styan 1982, p. 54.
2. "Faust". Global Performing Arts Database. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
3. Styan 1982, pp. 38,61.
4. Dilettante (1929). "Letters from Abroad - Berlin" (PDF). The Bermondsey Book, Dec. Jan. Feb. 1928-9. VI (I): 109. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
5. Annija Simsone, Atminas, Atminas, Gramatu Draugs, copyright 1961, page 109. Note: The book is in Latvian; an English translation exists but has not been published.
6. "Albert Bassermann, German Actor, Dies". Rutland Daily Herald. Vermont, Rutland. Associated Press. May 16, 1952. p. 3. Retrieved November 1, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.

Sources

• Styan, J. L. (1982). Max Reinhardt. Cambridge: CUP Archive. ISBN 9780521295048.

External links

• Albert Bassermann at IMDb
• Photographs of Albert Bassermann
• Albert Bassermann at Find a Grave