Ernst Deutsch

Ernst Deutsch was born on 16 September 1890 in Prague, then part of Bohemia in the Austro‑Hungarian Empire, to a Jewish merchant family. He grew up in a cultured environment, attending a local high school where he excelled at tennis, achieving a seventh‑place ranking on the Austro‑Hungarian list, and later served in the imperial army before turning to the stage. His professional debut came in 1914 at the People's Theatre in Vienna under the direction of Berthold Viertel, and after a brief stint in Prague he was recruited by Edgar Licho to join the Albert Theatre in Dresden in 1916. Deutsch’s breakthrough arrived that same year when he created the title role in Walter Hasenclever’s avant‑garde play The Son, a performance that cemented his reputation as a leading Expressionist actor and led to further acclaimed roles such as Franz Moor in Schiller’s The Robbers and Moritz in Wedekind’s Spring Awakening. Between 1916 and 1933 he appeared on major Berlin stages, toured South America, and built an extensive silent‑film résumé of more than forty titles, including the iconic role of the Rabbi Famulus in Paul Wegener’s The Golem (1920).**

**In 1933, facing growing Nazi persecution, Deutsch fled Germany, living briefly in Vienna, Prague and Zürich before emigrating to the United States in 1938. He adopted the Anglicised name Ernest Dorian and began a second cinematic chapter in Hollywood, often cast as German officers or aristocratic villains, most famously as Baron Kurtz in Carol Reed’s classic noir The Third Man (1949). After World II he returned to Europe, joining the Burgtheater in Vienna where he performed the title role of Nathan the Wise more than two thousand times, and later re‑established himself in Berlin’s theatrical scene. In 1948 he received the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance in Der Prozeß. Ernst Deutsch died on 22 March 1969 in West Berlin and was interred in the Jewish cemetery on the city’s outskirts, leaving a legacy that spans Expressionist theatre, silent cinema, and post‑war film noir.