Albert Bassermann

Albert Bassermann
Albert Bassermann as "Van Meer" in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.
Born	(1867-09-07)7 September 1867 Mannheim, Germany
Died	en route to Zurich, Switzerland
Occupation	Screen, Stage Actor
Years active	1887-1948
Spouse(s)	Elsa Basserman (1908–1952; his death)

Albert Bassermann (7 September 1867 – 15 May 1952) was a German stage and screen actor. He was married to Elsa Bassermann whom he frequently performed alongside.

Life and career

His grave in Mannheim

Bassermann began his acting career in 1887 in his birthplace, Mannheim after he began to study Chemistry at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in 1884/85. At Karlsruhe he was active corporative student from 1884/85 in the fraternity Palatia (beer-name: "Zampa") for several semesters he then spent four years at the Hoftheater in Meiningen. He then moved to Berlin. From 1899, he worked for Otto Brahm. He began work at the Deutsches Theater from 1904, and in 1909 worked at the Lessing Theatre. From 1909 to 1915, Bassermann worked with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Roles included Othello in 1910, Faust Part II with Friedrich Kayssler in 1911, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and August Strindberg's The Storm with de:Gertrud Eysoldt in 1913.

Bassermann was among the first German theatre actors who worked in film. In 1913, he played the main role of the lawyer in Max Mack's de (The Other), after the play by Paul Lindau. In 1915 he appeared in Egmont (play) with de:Victor Barnowsky at the de:Deutsches Künstlertheater. He also worked with German silent film directors Richard Oswald, Ernst Lubitsch, Leopold Jessner and Lupu Pick. In 1928 he appeared in the first staging of Carl Zuckmayer's Katharina Knie, and in November that year in Herr Lambertier by Verneuil In 1933, Bassermann left Germany and lived in the United States from 1938.

Annija Simsone who played opposite Bassermann in the Neue Wiener Buehne Theater in the 1920s wrote the following in her autobiography: "During the Hitler era, Bassermann did not perform in Germany, though Adolf Hitler personally held him in high regard; Elsa was Jewish. Bassermann was told that if he wanted to continue to perform in Germany, he would have to get divorced. He did not get divorced, but Elsa and he went to Switzerland instead."

Although his ability to speak English was very limited, he learned lines phonetically with assistance from his wife and found work as a character actor. For his performance as the Dutch statesman Van Meer in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, Bassermann was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor in 1940. He returned to Europe in 1946. His final film appearance was in The Red Shoes.

Of him, the revered American actress Uta Hagen had this to say in her acting textbook Respect for Acting.: "One of the finest lessons I ever learned was from the great German actor Albert Basserman. I worked with him as Hilde in The Master Builder by Ibsen. He was already past eighty but was as 'modern' in his conception of the role of Solness and in his techniques as anyone I've ever seen or played with. In rehearsals he felt his way with the new cast. (The role had been in his repertoire for almost forty years.) He watched us, listened to us, adjusted to us, meanwhile executing his actions with only a small part of his playing energy. At the first dress rehearsal, he started to play fully. There was such a vibrant reality to the rhythm of his speech and behavior that I was swept away by it. I kept waiting for him to come to an end with his intentions so that I could take my 'turn.' As a result, I either made a big hole in the dialogue or desperately cut in on him in order to avoid another hole. I was expecting the usual 'It's your turn; then it's my turn.' At the end of the first act I went to his dressing room and said, 'Mr. Basserman, I can't apologize enough, but I never know when you're through!' He looked at me in amazement and said, 'I'm never through! And neither should you be.'"

His illustrious career was acknowledged when he received the Iffland-Ring from the prominent actor Friedrich Haase. While Bassermann himself attempted to bestow the Iffland-Ring, he outlived each of the three grantees he chose. Not wanting to be mistaken a fourth time, Bassermann deferred making a choice; instead, a group of German actors made the decision. 65 years after at the occasion of a guest appearance at The Mannheim National Theatre the aged Thespian "Zampa" was visibly churned receiving a bouquet of flowers with the colours of his fraternity Palatia remembering his joyful-careless time in his student fraternity at the Karlsruhe University 1884

Death

Bassermann died from a heart attack while on a flight from New York to Zurich. He is buried in Mannheim.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1913	Der König	Provinzschauspieler
	de	Dr. Hallers	The Other
	Der Letzte Tag	Professor Osterode
1914	Urteil des Arztes	Dr. Erwin Hofmüller
1917	Du sollst keine anderen Götter haben
	Der Eiserne Wille
	Herr und Diener
1918	Dr. Schotte
	Die Brüder von Zaarden
	Vater und Sohn
	Lorenzo Burghardt
1919	Eine Schwache Stunde
	Der Letzte Zeuge		The Last Witness
	Das Werk seines Lebens
1920	Puppen des Todes
	Masken
	Die Söhne des Grafen Dossy
	Die Stimme
	Die Duplizität der Ereignisse
1921	Die Kleine Dagmar
	Frauenarzt, Der	Dr. Wolfgang Holländer
	Burning Country
	Die Nächte des Cornelis Brouwer	Cornelis Brouwer
1922	Lucrezia Borgia	Papst Alexander VI
	Frauenopfer	Graf	Women's Sacrifice
	Das Weib des Pharao	Sothis	Pharaoh's Wife
1923	Old Heidelberg		The Student Prince
	Christopher Columbus	Columbus
	Earth Spirit	Dr. Schoen
	Der Mann mit der eisernen Maske		The Man with the Iron Mask
1924	Helena	Aisakos	Helen of Troy
1925	Briefe, die ihn nicht erreichten
	Der Herr Generaldirektor
1926	Wenn das Herz der Jugend spricht
	Die Mühle von Sanssouci	Adjudant Buddenbrock	The Mill of Sanssouci
1929	Fräulein Else	Dr. Alfred Thalhof
	Napoleon at Saint Helena	Gouverneur Hudson Lowe
1930	Dreyfus	Col. Picquart	The Dreyfus Case
	Alraune	Privy Councillor ten Brinken	Daughter of Evil
1931	1914	Count Hollweg
	Gefahren der Liebe	Dr. Ringius
	Inquest	Dr. Konrad Bienert
	Kadetten		Cadets
1932	The Golden Anchor	Piquoiseau
1933	Ein gewisser Herr Gran	Tschernikoff, Kunsthändler
1935	Letzte Liebe		Last Love
1939	fr	Col. von Gelow
1940	Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet	Dr. Robert Koch
	Foreign Correspondent	Van Meer	nominated: Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
	Knute Rockne, All American	Father Julius Nieuwland
	A Dispatch from Reuter's	Franz Geller
	Escape	Dr. Arthur Henning
	Moon Over Burma	Basil Renner
1941	A Woman's Face	Consul Magnus Barring
	The Great Awakening	Ludwig van Beethoven
	The Shanghai Gesture	Van Elst
	The Captain from Köpenick	Wilhelm Voigt, a shoemaker	released 1945
1942	Fly-by-Night	Dr. Storm
	Invisible Agent	Arnold Schmidt
	Desperate Journey	Dr. Ludwig Mather
	The Moon and Sixpence	Dr. Coutras
	Once Upon a Honeymoon	Gen. Borelski
	Reunion in France	General Hugo Schroeder
1943	Good Luck, Mr. Yates	Dr. Carl Hesser
	Madame Curie	Prof. Jean Perot
1944	Since You Went Away	Dr. Sigmund Gottlieb Golden
1945	Strange Holiday		The Day After Tomorrow
	Rhapsody in Blue	Prof. Franck
1946	The Searching Wind	Count von Stammer
1947	Escape Me Never	Prof. Heinrich
	The Private Affairs of Bel Ami	Jacques Rival
1948	The Red Shoes	Sergei Ratov

See also

• List of German-speaking Academy Award winners and nominees

External links

• Albert Bassermann at the Internet Movie Database
• Photographs of Albert Bassermann