Paul Wegener

1874–1948 · German actor and film director, a figure of German expressionist cinema

Biography

Paul Wegener (born 1874 in Arnoldsdorf, East Prussia, now Jarantowice in Poland; died in Berlin in 1948) was a German actor and director whose name is closely tied to German expressionist cinema. He is best remembered for his films about the Golem, based on Gustav Meyrink's novel, which secured his place in film history. The son of Anna Wolff and Otto Wegener, he began studying law at the University of Leipzig but turned toward poetry and the theatre instead.

In 1905 he left his studies to join Max Reinhardt's theatre company, where he trained in the German stage tradition. He made his screen debut in 1913 with The Student of Prague, directed by Stellan Rye. While working on that film he encountered the old Jewish legend of the Golem, and with Henrik Galeen he turned it into a screenplay. His first version, from 1915, is now lost but was a success that established his reputation. He later directed The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), now regarded as a classic, in which he also starred, co-directing with Carl Boese.

Wegener worked across acting, directing and writing, and his interests in trick photography, the supernatural and Eastern mysticism shaped films such as The Yogi (1916). He worked with Ernst Lubitsch on Sumurun and The Loves of Pharaoh, and with Henrik Galeen on Alraune (1928). In 1926 he made The Magician for Rex Ingram in Hollywood, his only American film.

After the Nazis took power in 1933 he kept working and took roles in state propaganda films, including Kolberg (1945), a choice that weighs heavily in assessments of his career. After the war he helped revive theatre life in Berlin. He died in his sleep in September 1948, two months after collapsing on stage.