Erwin Geschonneck(1906-2008)
- Actor
Erwin Geschonneck was born on 27 December 1906 in Bartenstein/East
Prussia (now Poland). In the Twenties, he became a member of the
Communistic Party of Germany. After rise of Nazism, he emigrated to
Poland, later to Latvia and Czechoslovakia. In the Soviet Union he
became a member of a German theatre company. In 1938 he was arrested in
Prague and was deported to different concentration camps. Finally he
was evacuated from the concentration camp of Neuengamme near Hamburg to
Denmark. But the boat, the Cap Arcona, was accidentally bombed by the
RAF. The ship sank in the bay of Lübeck, and Geschonneck was one of
only a few survivors. In 1945 he played theatre in Hamburg and had his
film debut in Helmut Käutner's post-war drama 'In Jenen Tagen'. It was
the famous 'Bertholt Brecht' who offered him a contract for his Berlin Ensemble.
Geschonneck moved to East Berlin and became a star of the newly founded
DEFA, the only production company of the German Democratic Republic.
