Biography
What prompted me to create this webpage was my admiration for the F.W. Murnau 1922 silent horror classic Nosferatu and, in particular, the performance of Gustav von Wangenheim as real estate agent and unintentional bringer of the vampire, Thomas Hutter. He looks scared out of his wits when encountering the menacing, rat-like Count Orlok. My favorite scene is when Hutter finds Orlok snoozing in his coffin. Hutter flings open the lid to the coffin and, upon seeing the vampire awakened from his sleep, is so frightened he collapses on the stairs and can only manage to crawl up the stairs on his side. I was so impressed with this actor that I wanted to learn more. A little research on the Internet revealed that available information on the actor, aside from the usual haunts like imdb and wikipedia, was sparse. Amidst the search engine listings of pages siting rudementary facts about his life and career were opinions of movie critics and fans that were mostly negative of his Nosferatu performance. Most of the criticism is aimed at his perceived over-the-top scenes with Greta Schroeder who played his wife Ellen.
Eddie Izzard played Wangenheim in the E. Elias Merhige film Shadow of the Vampire, a fantastical interpretation on the making of Nosferatu that has F.W. Murnau wanting the vampire scenes to be so realistic that he hires a real vampire. In an interview clip from the Behind-the-Scenes Featurette on the DVD release, Izzard gave his opinion on the actor he protrayed as follows: "I had to research how to be a bad actor in a bad wig. I might have underplayed it a bit because Gustav von Wangenheim in the actual Nosferatu had some big ol' acting [demonstrates with arm motions] he had some of these kind of movements which seem very over-the-top now and I don't know back in the twenties because he was a B actor; he was not their main choice; he wasn't the top ten of the acting things; he wasn't the Bob De Niro of his time and no one goes, 'Oh, let's go and see a Gustav von Wangenheim film.'"
Well, if someone in the acting profession who actually played Wangenheim as a character did not have respect for his acting abilities, there was little chance of a tribute site sprouting up on its own (not to mention the fact that Wangenheim was a committed Communist). This page is thus an attempt to gather information on the actor/playwright/director garnered from books on theatre and Soviet exiles and screen shots from his available film appearances to create a somewhat substantial tribute to pop up on search engines if anyone else wanted to learn more about the man behind Hutter.
Early Years
Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von Wangenheim was born on February 18, 1895 in Wiesbaden, the capital city of the federal state of Hesse located in southwestern Germany. He was born into a theatrical family as both his parents were actors. His father, Eduard Clemens Freiherr von Wangenheim who went by the stage name Eduard von Winterstein, appeared in over 200 films in a fifty year career. Gustav started his career on the stage and screen at a young age and was a student of Max Reinhardt who, like Gustav's father, was an Austrian. Reinhardt was head of the Deutsches Theater ("German Theatre") in Berlin from 1905 to 1930, a position his pupil Gustav would later have. Wangenheim's first film appearance was in Passionels Tagebuch in 1914. Among other films, he played main characters in Ernst Lubitsch comedies from 1920 Kohlhiesels Töchter (Kohlhiesel's Daughters) and Romeo und Julia im Schnee (Romeo and Julia in the Snow) where he had second billing as Romeo.
Wangenheim also demonstrated musical gifts as well as a political-mindedness in his youth. He performed two of his original songs at the opening of the Schall Und Rauch (Sound and Smoke) cabaret in Berlin on December 8, 1919. Sound and Smoke was an avant-garde club for experimental theatre that was first established by Reinhardt in 1901. In this post-WWI revived version of the revue, Wangenheim's songs (performed in a Pierrot costume) offered a nostaglic look to the antebellum days where literary men, intellectuals, and bohemians were found in the Berlin cafes instead of the Schieber (grafters, swindlers, marketeers) who replaced them after the war. In a line from one of the songs, Wangenheim also denounced the Dadaist movement: "Dadaism is the bitter end, / an artists' hoax for any entrance-fee" (Der Dadaism ist das bitt're Ende, / der Kuenstlerulk um jeden Eintrittspreis) (Jelavich, pp. 130-1, 145). Dadaism, the anti-war, anti-bourgeois and quasi-anarchistic cultural movement was actually introduced to Berlin the year before by co-founder Richard Huelsenbeck. Later, after joining the Communist party, Wangenheim would show that he was not anti-bourgeois and not against force and totalitarianism.
Major Film Appearances
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror) (1922)
Wangenheim's most famous film role was as Thomas Hutter in F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu. Filmed in 1921 in such locations as Lübeck, the Carpathian Mountains, and Slovakia, Nosferatu is an aesthetic masterpiece; however, it probably had little impact on the acting career of Wangenheim. It was not as successful as expected and, to make matters worse, the widow of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, sued the filmmakers, Prana-Film, for unauthorized adaptation of her husband's novel. In July 1925, she won the lawsuit and all copies and negatives of the film were ordered to be destroyed. Fortunately, copies survived and Nosferatu is now one of the most famous silent films ever made, appreciated more by current generations than during Wangenheim's time.
Although some critics today fault Wangenheim's exaggerated acting style, it is important to note that Nosferatu is an example of German Expressionism which emphasized emotion and distortion over physical reality. Also, a contrast was being made between Hutter and Count Orlok, played with the utmost distortion by Max Schreck. Hutter had a childlike innocence and looked at his world with wide-eyed, almost goofy, amazement. His wife was a virgin as only "an innocent maiden" could give her blood to the vampire and "maketh the vampire heed not the first crowing of the cock." Hutter's sexual immaturity contrasts with Orlok's ancient blood lust. Hutter adored Ellen in a sweet, protective, platonic way and Ellen loved him as is demonstrated when she intervenes to save Hutter from Orlok's clutches through her spitual connection to the vampire and that she calls out Hutter's name before her death after giving herself to the vampire to save the townspeople from the plague he unleashed.
Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination (Shadows - A Nocturnal Hallucination) aka Warning Shadows (USA) (1923)
After the failure of Nosferatu, the partners of Prana-Film formed a new production company, Pan Film. The company's first film was Warning Shadows released in Germany October 16, 1923. Directed by Arthur Robison, it is an excellent example of German Expressionism. With no intertitles, the actors exaggerate their mood and emotions to drive a screenplay where passions, jealousy, revenge, fear, and murder are played out. The setting of the story is a dinner party hosted by a sadistically jealous husband and lusty wife whose guests, inexplicably, consist solely of four men who have an infatuation with the wife (sounds like poor party planning). Three of the suitors are goof balls while Gustav von Wangenheim plays the more serious lover with whom the wife is willing to have an affair. Alexander Granach (Knock in Nosferatu) is the "Traveling Entertainer" who specializes in shadow puppets (shadows also played a key role in Nosferatu). These shadows reveal the consequences of the characters' desires and hatreds. Like Hutter, Wangenheim's character is protective and caring toward the object of his affection and will ultimately lose her as well, albeit in a different way. He also looks like Hutter, though there is no record as to whether Eddie Izzard thought the wig was an improvement.
Frau Im Mond (Woman in the Moon) (1929)
Woman in the Moon was directed by Fritz Lang, remembered for Expressionist masterpieces like Metropolis and M. This film was very innovative, showing a rocket launch to space (with the first countdown to launch in film), zero gravity (although it didn't seem to affect their hair), and the characters on the moon's surface. Wangenheim plays Hans Windegger, an engineer and best friend of the Head of Helius Flight Hangars, Wolf Helius. Windegger is engaged to assistant Friede Velten who, unbeknownst to Windegger, is also the object of Helius's affection. Windegger is a very emotional, spontaneous, impulsive character whose knee-jerk reactions and ultimate cowardliness contrast with the serious, analytical, and unemotional Helius. Again, Wangenheim's character loses the girl in the end. It is not known how Izzard would rate Wangenheim's acting in this film, but at least he did not wear a "bad wig."
An intriguing character in Woman in the Moon is played by Fritz Rasp who was also in Warning Shadows. He plays an evil and mysterious unnamed character who tries to take over the moon landing project. He looks like a Nazi and even sports a Hitler haircut. Being that this film was released a little over three years before Hitler became the German Chancellor, Rasp's character is quite a freakish foreshadowing. Both Wangenheim and Lang were anti-Nazi. They both ended up fleeing to Paris after the Nazis took power. Lang would move to the United States while Wangenheim went East.
The rest of the biography is in progress. Please check back soon!
