Conrad Veidt

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was a very popular German actor. Conrad Veidt was born in Berlin, Germany. He was the son of Amalie Marie and Phillip Heinrich Veidt. He married thrice. First, he married to Augusta Holl, known as Gussy on 18 June 1918. After some time, they got divorced. His second wife was Felicitas Radke; they married in 1923. They have a daughter named Vera Viola Maria. Her last wife was a Hungarian Jew called Lily. They married in 1933 and lived together until death. During World War 1, Veidt was conscripted into the German Army. In 1915, he took part in the battle of Warsaw. Later, he applied to the theatre. He has to be evacuated to a hospital on the Baltic Sea because of jaundice. As his condition had not improved, the army allows him to join theatre. In 1916, he was reexamined and seems unfit for service, and given full discharge in January 1917. From 1916, he appeared in numerous films. Some of his memorable movies were The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Man Who Laugh (1928), Casablance (1942), and much more.

His first debut was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1920. Veidt also appeared in others silent horror movie such as The Hands of Orlac in 1924, directed by Robert Wiene, The Student of Prague in 1926 and in Waxworks in 1924 in which he played the role of Ivan the Terrible. He made a move to Hollywood in the late 1920s. He did few Hollywood films, but because of difficulty in speaking English, he returned to Germany. By 1941, he and his wife had moved to California. He gave his life savings to the British government to help finance the war effort. In U.S., he starred in few movies such as George Cukor’s A Woman’s Face (1941), Nazi Agent in 1942, etc. Some of his memorable and famous movies are The Story of Dida Ibsen, Madness, Longing, Lady Hamilton, Destiny, A Man’s Past, The Last Performance, Escape, and A Woman’s Face, Nazi Agent, Above Suspicion and many others. His best known Hollywood role was as Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca in 1942. In 1943, when he was aged fifty, he died due to the heart attack. He lent his fortune to the British Government and donated large amounts of his film salaries to help with the British war effort.