Geschonneck, Erwin

▪ 2009

      German actor

born Dec. 27, 1906, Bartenstein, East Prussia, Ger. [now Bartoszyce, Pol.]

died March 12, 2008, Berlin, Ger.

was one of East Germany's most respected character actors on the stage—in Hamburg (1946–49) and as a member (1949–56) of Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble—and on-screen (1946–95) in scores of movie and television appearances, notably as the tragic Kowalski in the Academy Award-nominated film Jakob, der Lügner (1975; Jacob the Liar). Geschonneck joined the German Communist Party in 1919, and when Hitler came to power (1933), he fled to the Soviet Union and eventually to Prague, where he was arrested by the Gestapo. After spending six years in German concentration camps, Geschonneck in 1945 was among some 4,000 prisoners being transported on the liner Cap Arcona when it was sunk by British forces. He was one of only about 350 survivors and later appeared in a 1982 East German TV movie and a 1995 documentary about the incident.

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