Werner Krauss

German stage and film actor Werner Krauss (1884-1959) became a worldwide sensation as the demonic Dr. Caligari in the classic of the German expressionist cinema, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). He appeared in several silent masterpieces, but his magnificent film career was later overshadowed by his appearance in one of the most notorious propaganda films of the Third Reich.


German photocard for the album Vom Werden Deutscher Filmkunst by Ross Verlag. Photo: Ufa. Werner Krauss in the classic German Kammerspiel film Scherben/Shattered (Lupu Pick, 1921). The woman is Edith Posca, who plays the daughter.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie-Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Emil Jannings as Othello.


German postcard by Ross Verlag G.m.b.H., Berlin, no. 666/5, 1919-1924. Photo: Neumann-Filmproduktion. Publicity still for I.N.R.I./Crown of Thorns (Robert Wiene, 1923). Caption: Pontius Pilatus.


German postcard by Ross Verlag G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Sofar-Film-Produktion. Publicity still for Die freudlose Gasse/The Joyless Street (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1925).


German photocard for the album Vom Werden Deutscher Filmkunst by Ross Verlag. Photo: Ufa. Werner Krauss in Geheimnisse einer Seele/Secrets of a Soul (G.W. Pabst, 1926).


German collectors card by Ross Verlag in the series Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst - Der Stumme Film, picture no. 194, group 40. Photo: Ufa. Werner Krauss and Heinerle in Der fidele Bauer/The Merry Farmer (Franz Seitz, 1929).

Worldwide sensation

Werner Johannes Krauss (Krauß in German) was born in Gestungshausen, Germany, in 1884. He was the son of a clergyman. He ran away from home and joined a travelling theatre company.

In Berlin, he became a film actor. Among his first films were Die Pagode/The Pagoda (Joe May, 1914), Nächte des Grauens/A Night of Horror (Richard Oswald, Arthur Robison, 1916) with Emil Jannings, Hoffmanns Erzählungen/Tales of Hoffmann (Richard Oswald, 1916) and Opium (Robert Reinert, 1919) with Conrad Veidt.

In 1916, he met the noted theatre director Max Reinhardt and went to work for him. Krauss had been trained to do exaggerated gestures for the stage, and the German expressionist cinema was but a short stylistic step further for him.

In 1919, he became a worldwide sensation for his demonic portrayal of Dr. Caligari in Robert Wiene's Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Dr. Caligari is a sinister hypnotist who travels the carnival circuit displaying a somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt). In one tiny German town, a series of murders coincides with Caligari's visit. Krauss was just 35 at the time he appeared in the film, but his heavy makeup made him seem older.

Doug Tomlinson at Film Reference: “In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Krauss epitomizes the German Expressionist performance aesthetic which would dominate the next decade: an obvious external expression of interiority. Throughout the central part of the film, Krauss hobbles through nightmare sets, his crippled walk an expression of a crippled mind, his dark and menacing facial and body makeup of the rot within, and his sparse and erratic white hair of his overall decrepitude. His posture, rounded inward to symbolize mystery and enclosure, refuses the spectator any sympathetic identification. At the film's end, when Caligari is shown to be the head of an asylum and the film the rantings of an inmate, Krauss expressionistically softens all aspects of posture and characterization to appear the epitome of benevolence.“


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 630/2. Werner Krauß as Rose's father, Henny Porten as Rose Bernd, and Hilde Müller (unknown part) in Rose Bernd (Alfred Halm, 1919), adapted from the eponymous play by Gerhard Hauptmann.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 9138. Photo: Fritz Richard. Publicity for the stage play 'Dantons Tod' (The Death of Danton) with Werner Krauss as St. Just.


German postcard by NPG, no. 540. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 263/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder / Decla.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 263/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder / Decla.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 770. Photo: Eberth, Berlin.

A smorgasbord of visual delights

Werner Krauss’ heavy, declamatory technique was perfect for such roles as Bottom in Ein Sommernachtstraum/A Midsummer Night's Dream (Hans Neumann, 1924) and Jack the Ripper in Das Wachsfigurenkabinett/The Wax Works (Paul Leni, 1924) opposite Emil Jannings and Conrad Veidt.

He also played Iago in a 1922 adaptation of William Shakespeare's Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “Even without the benefit of sound, the 1922 German adaptation of Othello seems more operatic than Shakespearean. This may be due to the casting of Emil Jannings, to whom restraint and subtlety were strangers. Werner Krauss, of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari fame, is on hand as the duplicitous Iago. Appearing as the unfortunate Desdemona is Lea Von Lenkeffy, better known as Lya de Putti. Produced on an elaborate scale, Othello may not be true to the letter of Shakespeare, but is undeniably a smorgasbord of visual delights.”

Krauss was again prominently featured in such silent masterpieces as Varieté/Jealousy (Ewald André Dupont, 1925), Herr Tartüff/Tartuffe (F.W. Murnau, 1925) based on the classic Molière play, and Der Student von Prag/The Man Who Cheated Life (Henrik Galeen, 1926).

He also worked internationally. In France, he appeared as the obsessed Count Muffat in Jean Renoir's version of Emile Zola's Nana (Jean Renoir, 1926). Totally submissive to the demands of the exploitative Nana, he ultimately disgraces himself by barking, sitting, rolling over, and playing dead like a dog. His utterly degraded character is reflected in his lumpish posture.

By 1926, Krauss had worked with such major directors as F.W. Murnau, G.W. Pabst, Lupu Pick, E. A. Dupont, Richard Oswald, Paul Leni, and Jean Renoir. He was one of the leading German film actors of his time, but his obsessed and evil characters became more and more a cliché.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1613/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Atelier Domker, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1613/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Atelier Badekow-Grósz, Berlin.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 636.


Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 5353. Photo: Fery-Film / Ifuk-Verleih. Publicity still for Der fidele Bauer/The Merry Farmer (Franz Seitz, 1929).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 115/2. Photo: D.L.S. Werner Krauss in Napoleon auf St. Helena/Napoleon at St. Helena (Lupu Pick, 1929). The outfit of Krauss is that of Goethe in the famous painting 'Goethe in the Campagna' (1787) by Tischbein.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6171/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa. Werner Krauss as the title character in Yorck (Gustav Ucicky, 1931).

Actor of the state

When Adolf Hitler came to power, Werner Krauss clutched the Nazi ideology firmly to his bosom. He only incidentally played in films such as the charming Burgtheater/Burg Theatre (Willi Forst, 1936) with Olga Tschechova.

He was made an Actor of the State by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, and subsequently played the roles of two stereotypical Jewish characters – Rabbi Loew and Sekretar Levy – in Veit Harlan's notoriously antisemitic Jud Süß/Jew Süss (Veit Harlan, 1940).

Hal Erickson writes in his review at AllMovie: “Lion Feuchtwangler's novel Jud Süss was originally about a powerful ghetto businessman who believes himself to be a Jew. Süss's ruthless business practices result in the betrayal of an innocent girl, for which he is arrested and sentenced to be hanged under the anti-Jewish laws of the 18th century. While he waits to be executed, Süss discovers he is not Jewish. Rather than turn his back on the people of the ghetto with whom he'd grown up, Süss courageously refuses to declare his 'Aryan' status, even though it means he will die on the gallows. The Feuchtwangler book was designed in a roundabout fashion to strike a blow against anti-Semitism. But when Jud Süss was filmed in Germany at the behest of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in 1940, its original message was twisted and perverted into an argument in favour of 'ethnic cleansing'.”

Krauss also played Shylock in an extreme production of 'The Merchant of Venice' staged at Vienna's Burgtheater in 1943. After World War II, all associated with Jud Süss were plagued with recriminations for their participation, which drove Krauss out of the country for more than three years.

Leading German democrats registered emphatic opposition to his public appearances. In June of 1954, one of West Germany's highest decorations was ceremoniously conferred on him by West Berlin's cultural and education chief. The actor appeared in only three more films before his death. His final film was the Heimatfilm Sohn Ohne Heimat/Son Without a Homeland (Hans Deppe, 1955). Werner Krauss died in relative obscurity in Vienna, Austria in 1959. He was married to Marie Bard who died in 1944.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9108/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Consorzio Vis / Rota. Publicity still for Hundert Tage/Hundred Days (Franz Wenzler, 1935) with Werner Krauss as Napoleon.


Big German card by Ross Verlag, Berlin. Photo: Tobis Sascha foto.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. A 3264/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Quick / Ufa.


Trailer Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Source: Movieclips Trailer Vault (YouTube).


Scene from Geheimnisse einer Seele/Secrets of a soul (1926). Source: sangrecoagulada (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Doug Tomlinson (Film Reference), Katzizkidz (Find A Grave), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 25 January 2025.

Der brennende Acker (1922)

This week's film special is about the German silent film Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Murnau shot this drama right before his vampire classic Nosferatu (1922). Der brennende Acker is remarkable for its beautiful exterior shots and its all-star cast, including Vladimir Gajdarov and Lya de Putti. For many decades the film was considered lost, but in 1978 an almost complete print was found in the estate of an Italian priest. This beautiful series of postcards by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, was published for the French release of the film, in France titled La terre qui flambe.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Maria (Grete Diercks) works in the household of Peter Rog and his father. Peter is in love with her and wants to marry her, but she instead loves his younger brother Johannes.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922) with Eugen Klöpfer as Peter Rog.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Peter Rog (Eugen Klöpfer) takes care of his dying father (Werner Krauss).

The Devil's Field

Der brennende Acker presents two households: that of the wealthy Count Josef Emmanuel of Rudenberg and the Rogs, a fairly prosperous farm family who live nearby.

When the old farmer Rog (Werner Krauss) dies, his hard-working son Peter (Eugen Klöpfer) attends him and stays at the farm after his father's death.

The other, younger son is the more worldly Johannes (Vladimir Gajdarov). He has great ambitions and he refuses the love of the servant Maria (Grete Diercks).

His ambition leads the handsome Johannes to charm Gerda (Lya de Putti), the daughter of the old Count Rudenberg (Eduard von Winterstein), who is also dying. Gerda helps Johannes to a job as the secretary of the Count.

Johannes discovers that the Count's second wife Helga (Stella Arbenina) will inherit the Devil's Field. Only he knows that the land sits on an untapped oil field worth a fortune.

Joahnnes turns his attention from Gerda to Helga. When she is widowed, he marries her. His greed leads to death and burning soil.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). At the farm of the Rog family. The housemaid Maria (Grete Diercks) eyes Johannes Rog (Vladimir Gajdarov), but he is only interested in money.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922) with Grete Diercks as the housemaid Marie.

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau

In the 1920s Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931) was with Fritz Lang and G. W. Pabst one of the three great German film directors. Sandra Brennan at AllMovie writes that "To this day German filmmaker F.W.Murnau remains one of the most influential directors of cinema."

He made his directorial debut in 1919, the fantasy film Der Knabe in Blau/Emerald of Death (1919). His next films were also fantasy films: The three-part Satanas/Satan (1919), Murnau's first film with cinematographer Karl Freund and leading actor Conrad Veidt, and Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin/The Hunchback and the Dancer (1920), that marked the start of Murnau's collaboration with screenplay writer Carl Mayer.

With Schloss Vogelöd/The Haunted Castle (1921), filmed in only 16 days, Murnau already proved his ability to create an atmosphere of fear and horror, an ability that he masterly refined in Der Brennende Acker (1922) and his famous vampire film Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens/Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922).

His next film, Der letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (1924), utilized unique camera techniques that later became the basis for mise-en-scene. For this film, Karl Freund masterly operated the 'moving camera'. Besides Der letzte Mann, Murnau's literary adaptations Tartüff/Tartuffe (1925) and Faust (1925/26) also rank among the classic films of Weimar cinema produced by Erich Pommer.

In 1926, Murnau moved to Hollywood to work for Fox studios. His first American film, Sunrise: A Story of Two Humans (1927), is considered to be the apex of German silent cinema and won an Academy Award for its artistic quality. His second American film Four Devils (1928) was turned into a happy ending and was equipped with a soundtrack. The same happened to Our Daily Bread/City Girl (1929-1930).

Murnau returned to Berlin but his negotiations with Ufa did not lead to a result. In 1929, he travelled to Tahiti where he made the naïve love story Tabu (1931) at his own expense. Deep in debt, he returned to Hollywood, where Paramount offered him a ten-year contract. Tabu became a box-office hit, but the week before it opened, F.W. Murnau was killed in an auto accident. He was only 42.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Gerda (Lya de Putti) and her maid (Leonie Taliansky).


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Count Rudenburg (Eduard von Winterstein), flanked by, left, his daughter Gerda (Lya de Putti), and right, his second wife Helga (Stella Arbenina).

Der brennende Acker

Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil or in French La terre qui flambe was considered lost for a long time. Until 1978 only the last three reels (totalling 843 meters compared to the original 2,645) of the film were known: this was the black-and-white copy preserved by the East German Cinematheque. In 1979, an almost complete copy of the film was identified only by film historian Vittorio Martinelli at the Cineteca Italiana in Milan. It was a version distributed in Italy under the title 'Il campo del diavolo' (The Devil's Field) whose opening credits and captions in Italian had certainly been made in Italy and whose images were developed in Germany. The copy belonged to a small collection of an Italian religious man who worked in institutions for the mentally ill and entertained the sick by showing old films.

Enno Patalas, director of the Münchener Filmmuseum, obtained an early black-and-white copy from a negative made in Milan: the Italian captions were replaced in Munich with new German titles from the script in the possession of F.W. Murnau's niece. From the early 1980s, this "lost" film was thus once again visible in Germany. However, a colour original still existed in Milan: with the collaboration of the Cineteca Italiana, the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz received the original material on which it was able to begin restoration work.

Having found the original censorship visa of 25 February 1922 with the text of all the captions, it was possible for the Münchener Filmmuseum to reconstruct the captions and inserts (the newspaper pages, letters, will, etc.) with the collaboration of the Pfenninger laboratory. In the absence of a model for the exact layout of the captions, inspiration was taken from other German films of the early 1920s, using dark green as the colour of the captions and light yellow as the colour of the inserts. The restored, colour version of Der brennende Acker was internationally first presented at the festival 'Il Cinema Ritrovato' in Bologna in November 1993.

Helmut Regel in the catalogue of 'Il Cinema Ritrovato', November 1993: "If the Milan copy had a length, including the Italian captions, of 2,346 meters, the new colour negative after the insertion of the new captions measures 2,325 meters. A missing sequence from a copy in the Moscow Gosfilmofond was, in addition, inserted. It is thus 320 meters short of the original footage of the copy intended by the censors (2,645 meters). In September 1993 the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv finished the restoration at the ABC & Taunus laboratory in Wiesbaden, resulting in a final print that comes enormously close to the original colours of the nitrate print. Finally, the long odyssey of a reconstruction had reached its end."

Der brennende Acker was acclaimed for its visual quality and the contrast between the simple rustic farm and the airy and elegant castle. Thorkell A. Ottarsson at IMDb: "The film is quite dramatic and dark, even surprisingly dark at times. A superb film from one of the best directors of all time." To achieve his visual effects, innovative camera angles, and bold lighting, Murnau had two of the most renowned cameramen photograph the film. Fritz Arno Wagner filmed the first part and Karl Freund the second part, and the sets were built by the equally renowned Rochus Gliese. Karl Freund, who began as a projectionist in Berlin and newsreel cameraman, worked for Ufa in the 1920s and gained the international reputation of being a master cameraman. His later credits include such classics as Metropolis, Der lezte Mann/The Last Laugh, Der Golem/The Golem and Variété/Variety.

W. Morrow at IMDb describes beautifully his fascination for Der brennende Acker: "a sustained mood of wintry melancholy, perked by a number of understated but impressive directorial touches. There's business involving a document torn into little pieces that is poetic. When Murnau was at his peak, in such films as Faust and Sunrise, he would stage his effects on a much grander scale, but here he manages to create a beautiful moment with a few torn pieces of paper."


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). The old maid talks to the young servants about the Devil's Field.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Helga, Count Rudenburg's second wife (Stella Arbenina), and Gerda, the Count's daughter (Lya de Putti), in a fierce get-together.

French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Johannes Rog (Vladimir Gajdarov) arrives too late at the deathbed of his father (Werner Krauss), while, left, his brother Peter (Eugen Klöpfer), and right, the maid Maria (Grete Diercks), look on.

Sources: Helmut Regel (article 'Der brennende Acker', in the catalogue Il Cinema Ritrovato, November 1993; text reused on Italian Wikipedia), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), John DeBartolo (Silents are Golden), W. Morrow (IMDb), Thorkell A. Ottarsson (IMDb), Yepok (IMDb), Filmportal.de (German), Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 3 July 2022.