- Born
- Died
- Birth nameFritz Heinrich Rasp
- Fritz Heinrich Rasp was the thirteenth child of a county surveyor. He was schooled from 1908-1909 at the Theaterschule Otto Königin in Munich where, due to a speech impediment, Rasp developed a Frankish dialect. Rasp debuted on the stage in 1909, as Amandus in Max Halbe's "Skandalstück Jugend" as the Münchner Schauspielhaus.
In May 1914, Rasp received a five-year contract in the Reinhardts Deutschem Theater in Berlin, which was interrupted by his military service to Germany from 1916 - 1918.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Mutti
- SpousesEva Hollaender(1918 - ?) (divorced, 2 children)Charlotte Petermann(? - November 30, 1976) (his death, 2 children)
- He portrayed the mysterious "Der Schmale" ("The Thin Man") in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Many of the scenes in the latter film in which he appears are part of the Metropolis footage long believed lost until their recovery in 2008.
- Ilja Ehrenburg, writer of the movie "Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney", wrote about Rasp in later days: "Of all actors in the movie "Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney" in 1927 Fritz Rasp was the one who pleased me most. He looked like a veritable scoundrel. When he bit the girl into her arm and covered the wound immediately afterwards with a dollar note instead of a adhesive plaster, I forgot that an actor was in front of me".
- His obituary in Der Spiegel described Rasp as "the German film villain in service, for over 60 years.".
- His first roles in front of the camera were appointed to comedic roles but already in the 20s he was mostly engaged for knavish and twisty characters.
- The sound movie couldn't harm the career of Fritz Rasp. He already played in the 30s in several Edgar-Wallace pictures which were very popular in Germany. Especially in the 50s and 60s there were a lot of remakes based on stories by Edgar Wallace which could lure a huge number of spectators into the cinema. Of course Rasp was also called to play one of the suspects.
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