German postcard, no. 853. Photo: Aura Hertwig.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6271/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa.
Friends with director Max Reinhardt
Friedrich Martin Adalbert Kayssler was born in Neurode in the Prussian Silesia Province, now Nowa Ruda in Poland in 1874. He attended the gymnasium in Breslau (Wrocław), where he became a close friend of Christian Morgenstern and Fritz Beblo. Kayßler studied philosophy at the universities of Breslau and Munich and graduated in 1893.
He began his theatre career at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin under manager Otto Brahm. Later, he worked at municipal theatres in Görlitz and Halle. When he resided in Görlitz he met his first wife Luise, who was an actress at the theatre in that place. At the Deutsches Theater, Kayßler made friends with director Max Reinhardt. Together they started the cabaret 'Schall und Rauch' in 1901. Christian Morgenstern joined them as a regular author. In 1904 he met Helene Fehdmer, who played Lola Montez at the Neues Theater. In 1905, she became his second wife and remained so till she died in 1939.
Kayssler followed Reinhardt, when he became the manager of the Deutsches Theater in 1905, where Kayßler performed in Heinrich von Kleist's 'The Prince of Homburg', Goethe's 'Faust' and Henrik Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt'. He succeeded Reinhardt as manager of the Berlin Volksbühne from 1918 until 1923. During this time, he discovered director Ludwig Berger and signed on Veit Harlan, Heinz Hilpert and Lucie Mannheim. Kayssler wrote several poems and dramas. In 1934 he starred alongside Veit Harlan in the Berlin premiere of Eugen Ortner's 'Meier Helmbrecht' at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus.
In 1913 Friedrich Kayssler made his film debut in the silent film Welche sterben, wenn sie lieben / Which Die When They Love (Carl Schönfeld, 1913). As the ambitious tunnel-building engineer Max Allan, he was the star of Der Tunnel / The Tunnel (William Wauer, 1915), based on Bernhard Kellermann's classic novel about the construction of a vast tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean connecting Europe and America.
Opposite Henny Porten he acted in various films in the 1920s: Die Liebe einer Königin / The Love of a Queen (Ludwig Wolff, 1923), Mutter und Kind / Mother and Child (Carl Froelich, 1924), Gräfin Donelli / Countess Donelli (G.W. Pabst, 1924), and later on, Luise, Königin von Preußen / Louise, Queen of Prussia (Carl Froehlich, 1931) and 24 Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau / 24 Hours in the Life of a Woman (Robert Land, 1931). He also acted with Maria Corda in Tragödie im Hause Habsburg / Tragedy in the House of Habsburg (Alexander Korda, 1924) and Eine Dubarry von heute / A Modern Dubarry (Alexander Korda, 1927) and with Mady Christians in Das brennende Herz / The Burning Heart (Ludwig Berger, 1929).
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., formerly Louis Blumenthal, no. 3408. Photo: Becker & Maass, Caption: Friedrich Kayssler as Faust.
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, no. 4761. Photo: Becker & Maass. Friedrich Kayssler in Goethe's play 'Faust, Part II'.
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 7834. Photo: Becker & Maass. Friedrich Kayssler as Peer Gynt and Ilka Grüning as his mother Aase in Ibsen's play 'Peer Gynt'. Kayssler debuted as Peer Gynt at the Lessingtheater in Berlin, on 15 September 1913. Grüning already then played his mother Aase. With the Lessing Theater company, Kayssler and Grüning would perform the play in Spring 1914 at the Neues Deutsches Theater in Prague, the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, and the Lobe-Theater at Breslau/Wroclaw.
Murdered by Red Army troops when trying to protect his wife
Between 1930 and the early 1940s, Friedrich Kayssler was also extremely active in German sound cinema. He acted in such films as the anti-war film Zwei Welten (Ewald André Dupont, 1930), the German version of Dupont's British sound film Two Worlds (Ewald André Dupont, 1930), Stürme über dem Mont Blanc / Storm Over Mont Blanc (Arnold Fanck, 1931) with Leni Riefenstahl, Das Flötenkonzert von Sans-Souci / The Flute Concert of Sanssouci (Gustav Ucicky, 1930) with Otto Gebühr, the Harry Piel thriller Das Schiff ohne Hafen / Ship Without a Harbour (Harry Piel, 1931), and the comedy Der Hauptmann von Köpenick / The Captain from Köpenick (Richard Oswald, 1931) with Max Adalbert.
In 1932 he played the lead in the period piece on the Napoleonic wars, Die elf Schill'schen Offiziere / The Eleven Schill Officers (Rudolf Meinert, 1932). Other remarkable parts Kayssler had in the German Science Fiction film Gold (Karl Hartl, 1934) with Hans Albers, and the historical drama Der alte und der junge König / The Old and the Young King (Hans Steinhoff, 1935) with Emil Jannings. Part of the tradition of Prussian films of the Weimar and Nazi eras, the film ostensibly deals with the intense conflict between Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I and his son and heir, Crown Prince Friedrich – the future King Friedrich II 'The Great'.
From 1933 onwards he worked for the Staatstheater, where he was directed by Gustaf Gründgens and Jürgen Fehling. Under the Nazi regime, Kayssler had the lead in the anti-Russian film Friesennot / Frisians in Peril (Willi Krause aka Peter Hagen, 1935) about a village of ethnic Frisians in Russia. Other important leads he had in the Sherlock Holmes film Der Hund von Baskerville / The Hound of the Baskervilles (Carl Lamac, 1937), the Heinrich von Kleist adaptation Der zerbrochene Krug / The Broken Jug (Gustav Ucicky, 1937) with Emil Jannings, and as police prefect of Paris in the historical drama Verwehte Spuren / Covered Tracks (Veit Harlan, 1938).
During the war years, he played King of Prussia Wilhelm I (German Emperor William I) in Bismarck (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1940) opposite Paul Hartmann as the title figure, and finally, he was Clara Schumann's father in Träumerei / Reverie (Harald Braun, 1944) with Hilde Krahl as Clara and Mathias Wieman as Robert Schuman.
In March 1944, his son Christian Kayssler, who was also a popular film actor, was killed in an Allied bombing raid. Friedrich Kayßler was named one of the Third Reich's most important artists in the Gottbegnadeten list of September 1944. On 30 April 1945, during the Battle of Berlin, he was trying to protect his landlady and was shot by Russian marauders at his door at the Max-Reimann-Strasse 17 in the suburb of Kleinmachnow near Berlin
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 695/4. Photo: Maxim Film. Henny Porten, Ferdinand von Alten, and Friedrich Kayssler in Gräfin Donelli (G.W. Pabst, 1924).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 125/7. Photo: Ufa. Otto Gebühr as King Frederick the Great (Friedrich II) of Prussia and Friedrich Kayssler as Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein in the early sound film Das Flötenkonzert von Sanssouci (Gustav von Ucicky, 1930). It was part of the popular cycle of Prussian films.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 167/6. Photo: Hans Adalbert Schlettow, Friedrich Kayssler and Paul Wegener in Marschall Vorwärts / Marshal Forwards (Heinz Paul, 1932).
Source: Androom, Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
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