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Kurt Gerron - Actor and Director
Kurt Gerron was born in Berlin on May 11th 1897. After graduating from school, he served in WWI and was wounded several times. During the war, he enrolled at med school and later finished his studies with a medical degree. In 1920, Gerron decided to work professionally as an actor. He played in numerous successful theatre productions in Berlin, including the first staging of Bertolt Brecht's "Dreigroschenoper", and also became known as the star of various high-profile comedy and revue programmes, where he appeared alongside other popular stage actors like Gustaf Gründgens, Max Adalbert, Paul Morgan and Curt Bois.
Very early in his career, Gerron started to appear in movies, for instance in several films by Richard Oswald. Among his frequent screen partners were Hans Albers and – after the introduction of sound – Heinz Rühmann. At the end of the 1920s, he enjoyed great popularity as an actor of both stage and screen, and had poignant cameos in films by befriended directors like G. W. Pabst's "Die weiße Hölle von Piz Palü" and "Tagebuch einer Verlorenen".
One of his most memorable roles was the magician Kiepert in "Der Blaue Engel", and subsequently Gerron was cast in popular sound films like "Die Drei von der Tankstelle" and "Bomben auf Monte Carlo". Already in 1926, Gerron made his directorial debut with "Der Liebe Lust und Leid" and from 1931 on, he worked frequently as a director of screen comedies starring colleagues like Rühmann, Dolly Haas or his long-time partner Sigi Arno.
Gerron's "Ein toller Einfall" was also produced in a French-language version and featured a prominent cast including star Willy Fritsch and renowned comedians like Max Adalbert, Jakob Tiedtke, Leo Slezak, Paul Hörbiger, Theo Lingen, Adele Sandrock and Oskar Sima. With Hans Albers in the lead role, Gerron made the crime caper "Der weiße Dämon" and the musical comedy "Heut" kommt's drauf an". In 1933, shortly before the Nazi government took control, Gerron – who was Jewish and also politically active – immigrated to France. Via Austria he finally relocated to the Netherlands, where he made several films and oversaw the dubbing of Disney's "Snow White". De facto retiring from filmmaking, he teamed up with other immigrants and started staging plays and revue programmes.
After Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, Gerron stayed in Amsterdam and became director of the Jewish theatre Joodsche Schouwberg, where he worked with fellow immigrants Rudolf Neson and Willi Rosen.
In 1943, Gerron was arrested and deported to the concentration camp in Westerbork. On Febuary 25th 1944, he was deported to the camp in Theresienstadt. In a gruesome attempt to deceive the world public and the Red Cross about the true horror of the death camps, the Nazis forced Gerron to oversee the production of the infamous propaganda film "Theresienstadt. Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt", which showed a totally false version of life in the ghettos.
After completion of the film, Gerron and other participants were deported to Auschwitz in October 1944. On October 28th 1944, Kurt Gerron was murdered in the gas chamber.