German collectors card by Ross Verlag in the series Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst - Der Stumme Film, picture no. 64, group 43. Photo: Ufa. Georg Alexander, Harry Liedtke and Hubert von Meyerinck in Der Mann ohne Nahmen/The Man Without a Name (Georg Jacoby, 1921).
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 1322/1, 1937-1938. Photo: K.J. Fritzsche Prod. / Tobis / Magna. Hubert von Meyerinck in Der Unwiderstehliche / The Irresistible Man (Géza von Bolváry, 1937).
Men with an airy-fairy demeanour who often turned out to be impostors or criminals
Hubert(us) Georg Werner Harald von Meyerinck was born in 1896 in Potsdam, Germany. He was the only son of Friedrich von Meyerinck, a Captain in the Prussian Army and landowner, and his first wife Caroline née von Hoppenstedt. The actress Gudrun Genest was his niece. As a young child, von Meyerinck already started taking acting lessons, much to the disdain of his parents who wanted him to become a priest.
After the divorce of his parents in 1909, he grew up with his mother on the family estate in Posen. He then attended a grammar school in Godesberg and was called up for military service during World War I. He served for a short time as an ensign in Karlsruhe but was discharged due to a lung disease that led to several stays in a sanatorium.
After acting lessons with Rudolf Lettinger, he made his theatre debut in 1917 at the Berliner Schauspielhaus as Leutnant von Hagen in Paul Heyse's 'Kolberg'. From 1918 to 1920, he had an engagement at the Hamburg Kammerspiele and then returned to Berlin, where he appeared successfully in Carl Sternheim's avant-garde plays. He appeared in various revues and cabarets, including the famous Tingeltangel. He later played at the Deutsches Theater, the Komödie am Kurfürstendamm (for example in the musical revue 'Es liegt was in der Luft' (There's Something in the Air) with Marlene Dietrich) and the Lessingtheater in roles such as Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife) in Bertolt Brecht's 'Die Dreigroschenoper' (The Threepenny Opera), and as the title figure in Carl Zuckmayer's satire 'Der Hauptmann von Köpenick' (The Captain of Köpenick).
In 1920, von Meyerinck was discovered for silent film. Bald, with a moustache and often wearing a monocle, he became a well-known figure in German film. After his first significant role in the serial Der Mann ohne Namen/Peter Voss, Thief of Millions (Georg Jacoby, 1921), he played supporting roles in silent films like Manon Lescaut (Arthur Robison, 1926) starring Lya de Putti or Wilhelm Dieterle's Ich lebe für Dich/Triumph of Love (1929). Initially, von Meyerinck emphasised the femininity of his appearance. In a Paul Wegener film, he danced on a table dressed in pink ballet flats, his mother's ermine cape and a blue silk cap as a headdress.
His distinctive homoerotic nuances were later used by his directors for negative characterisation. In the later emerging sound film, he brought his characteristic voice and rasping articulation to bear. He played men with an airy-fairy demeanour who often turned out to be impostors or criminals. Among his most popular works in the early sound days were Max Ophüls' Die verliebte Firma/The Company's in Love (1932), Wenn die Liebe Mode macht/When Love Sets the Fashion (Franz Wenzler, 1932) with Renate Müller and Der weiße Dämon/The White Demon (Kurt Gerron, 1932) starring Hans Albers, Gerda Maurus and Peter Lorre. He became the most popular film villain in German cinema.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3809/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz, Berlin.
Bizarre officials, aristocrats, generals and devious con artists
During the National Socialist era, Hubert von Meyerinck appeared in numerous films. Between 1933 and 1945, he appeared in over 90 productions, ranging from the comedy Ein falscher Fuffziger (1935) and Willi Forst's adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's Bel Ami (1939) to Helmut Käutner's Kitty und die Weltkonferenz/Kitty and the World Conference (1939), starring Hannelore Schroth.
He also played smaller parts in propagandistic productions like Ein Volksfeind/An Enemy of the People (Hans Steinhoff, 1937) starring Heinrich George or Trenck, der Pandur/Trenck, Officer of the Pandurs (Herbert Selpin, 1940). In 1944, von Meyerinck was on the 'Gottbegnadeten-Liste' (the list of godsent) by the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. In the theatre, he was repeatedly seen in classical roles, for example as Mephisto in Goethe's 'Faust' or as Malvolio in William Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night'.
Although it was known that von Meyerinck was homosexual, he was not prosecuted by the Nazis. His friend and colleague Kurt von Ruffin, who was also homosexual, was imprisoned in a concentration camp for nine months. According to Von Ruffin, Von Meyerink did not exercise any great restraint about his orientation at the time and stood by friends who were at risk. The Jewish director Billy Wilder spoke about Meyernick in a 1997 interview with Der Spiegel: "I remember a gay actor, we called him Hubsi, Hubert von Meyerinck. He never vaunted himself for that, but during the Kristallnacht, he went along the Kurfürstendamm and called: 'If somebody among you is Jewish, follow me!' He cached the people in his apartment. Yes, there were decent people, whose words you could believe, that it was hard to do resistance during that time. People like Meyerinck were marvellous, wonderful." Von Meyerinck moved to Munich in 1950 but also performed at the theatres in Göttingen and Wuppertal. In 1966, he received a permanent engagement at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, where he gave his last performance as Agamemnon in 'Die schöne Helena' in 1971.
In the post-war cinema, he was cast in film comedies as bizarre officials, aristocrats, generals and devious con artists. In 1957 alone, "Hubsi" – as he was endearingly called by his fans – appeared in 13 films, including the box office hits Der tolle Blomberg/The Mad Bomberg (Rolf Thiele, 1957) and Das Wirtshaus im Spessart/The Spessart Inn (Kurt Hoffmann, 1957). One of von Meyerinck's most famous roles was in Billy Wilder's classic comedy One, Two, Three (1961). There he played the impoverished yet pompous Count von Droste-Schattenburg, who worked as a toilet attendant and who adopted Horst Buchholz for financial reasons. Hubert von Meyerinck's last film successes were in the Edgar Wallace films Im Banne des Unheimlichen/The Zombie Walks (Alfred Vohrer, 1968) starring Joachim Fuchsberger, Der Gorilla von Soho/The Gorilla of Soho (Harald Philipp, 1968) with Horst Tappert, and Der Mann mit dem Glasauge/The Man With the Glass Eye (Alfred Vohrer, 1969), in which he played Sir Arthur, the quirky head of Scotland Yard. He appeared in a total of five Wallace films between 1965 and 1969.
By the end of his life, he had appeared in more than 275 films. Von Meyerinck knew how to shield his private life from the media. He was called ‘Hubsi’ or ‘Knurpsi’ by friends, family and colleagues. His memoirs were published in 1967 under the title 'Meine berühmten Freundinnen' (My Famous Girlfriends), in which he wrote about prominent colleagues like Marlene Dietrich and Adele Sandrock, but also about his beloved mother, with whom he had lived at Giesebrechtstraße 18 until her death. In 1971, Hubert von Meyerinck died of heart failure in Hamburg's Bethanien Hospital. He was 71. His grave is located in the Protestant cemetery in the parish of Schladen near Goslar. Berlin honoured him in August 1994 with the naming of Meyerinckplatz in Charlottenburg.
West German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1467. Photo: CCC / Gloria / Arthur Grimm. Hubert von Meyerinck in Liebe, Tanz und 1000 Schlager / Love, Dance, and 1000 Songs (Paul Martin, 1955).
West German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf. Photo: DFH / CCC / Arthur Grimm / Krau. Vico Torriani, Gerlinde Locker, Wolfgang Müller, Wolfgang Neuss, Hubert von Meyerinck and Ruth Stephan in Der Stern von Santa Clara / The Star of Santa Clara (Werner Jacobs, 1958).
Sources: I.S.Mowis (IMDb), Filmportal, Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
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