Charles Régnier

Charles Régnier
Born Charles Friedrich Antonio Régnier
(1914-07-22)22 July 1914
Freiburg, Germany
Died 13 September 2001(2001-09-13) (aged 87)
Bad Wiessee, Germany
Occupation Actor
Years active 1949–2000
Spouse(s) Pamela Wedekind (1941–1986) (her death)
Sonja Ziemann (1989–2001) (his death)

Karl Friedrich Anton Hermann Charles Regnier[1] (22 July 1914 – 13 September 2001) was a German actor, director, radio actor and translator. (Some sources inaccurately place Regnier's birth year as 1915.) He appeared in more than 135 films between 1949 and 2000. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was one of the busiest German theatre and film actors. His idiosyncratic, decidedly intellectual style and his sometimes slightly mocking acting, distant demeanour became his trademark and made him a much sought-after character actor.

Life and career

Régnier owed his name to his grandfather, a native Frenchman. Regnier was the first child of Anton Karl Regnier and Emile (Milly) Maria Friederike Harrer, born in Freiburg im Breisgau.[1] His father was a general practitioner and Charles initially wished to become a doctor. It was his dream like his childhood idol, Albert Schweitzer, to travel the world and help people.

Regnier was born in Strasbourg and Badenweiler where his maternal grandparents owned the hotel "Schloss Haus Baden". After his Suizid father's suicide in 1924, his mother moved her four sons first after Heidelberg, to Montreux at the Lake. As the mother with 1929 tuberculosis, the family decided to move to Davos. In the Switzerland he first Luftkurort Charles met with a number of celebrities, including the writer Alfred Henschke alias Klabund, who awakened Regnier's interest in literature and theatre. Together with his brothers, Charles led comedy "XYZ - game threes" in the private living room of Klabunds. His first acting performance was starring "Countess Y" contained therein. "As an actor I since then never again had the opportunity as a lady to occur, but often to show" how "it occurs as Lady", Regnier writes in his personal memoirs.

The early death of his father meant that the family was slowly impoverished. After several moves, the mother decided in increasingly smaller dwellings to move with her sons to Berlin in 1930. Here, Regnier met the writer Ernst Blass, who was almost completely blind. He regularly visited the sick man to read to him from books. Ernst Blass had an intellectually and artistically formative influence on the young Charles. Despite his family's extreme poverty, Régnier was occasionally able to take acting lessons. A little later (probably 1932) he played his first film role in the narrow "La lettre", turned the Regnier with friends in Prague. The film tells the touching story of an unemployed man, who wins first prize in the lottery, but tragically loses his ticket.

In 1933, Hitler was already in power, wanted to visit Regnier at last a national drama school. But he fell several times through the trials for the Reich Theatre Chamber. "He should not come back please", it urged him after the last test. When the Nazis began to reshape the German culture operation according to their ideas, Regnier 1934 was arrested and interned one of the first German concentration camps - because of his homosexuality in the KZ Lichtenburg. After nine months we sacked him, he - like many other prisoners - having must sign to report anything about the terrible events in the concentration camp. Traumatized by the captivity, Regnier defected to Italy, where he opened a small souvenir shop in Portofino. Because business was slow, Regnier returned to Berlin and finished a private acting school there.

Regnier's first engagement was in 1938 at the theatre at Greifsw. Here he met actress and singer Pamela Wedekind, daughter of the playwright Frank Wedekind. They married on June 21, 1941 in Berlin.[1] 1941, Regnier by Otto Falckenberg was appointed to the ensemble of the Munich Kammerspiele, where he served until 1958. In 1946, Regnier worked as a drama teacher at the newly founded Otto-Falckenberg-Schule.

Selected filmography

References

  1. 1 2 3 Wedekind from Horst KR. Neustadt am Rübenberge, Lower Saxony, Germany. In: Lower Saxony sex book. Volume 187 (1982), pp. 481-634, here p. 532
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