Albrecht Schoenhals

Born Moritz James Karl, Albrecht Schoenhals was the son of the German General upper physician Gustav Schoenhals (1855-1930) and an English mother.

Albrecht Schoenhals was born on March 7, 1888 in Mannheim, Germany as Albrecht Moritz James Karl Schoenhals.

The actor Albrecht Schönhals received a musical education and was also trained as a singer. But before he was able to launch his theater and film career he volunteered for the military in 1914. Just before the end of war he sustained a slight wound.

He grew up in Freiburg/Breisgau and then studied medicine in Berlin. Subsequently, he worked for a Berlin charity as a doctor and then volunteered as an army doctor for the field artillery regimen to Metz on the western front during World War I. In the last year of the war, he suffered a serious wound to his arm and was invalided out of service in 1918. While recovering, he wrote his doctoral thesis and joined a volunteer corps of the Army School Döberitz.

After WWO I he took acting lessons by the famous actor Eduard von Winterstein and made his debut at the Stadttheater Freiburg in 1920. In the next years he also worked in Frankfurt, Dortmund and Hamburg.

Dignified, suave leading man of German romantic melodramas of the 1930's and 40's, the son of a staff doctor and initially trained as a physician. He served as a field doctor with an artillery regiment on the western front in World War I. Wounded and invalided out of service in 1918. Took acting classes under Eduard von Winterstein in Freiburg, 1920. Ensemble member of the Hamburg Kammerspielen, 1928 to 1934. Subsequent film career, adept at playing aristocrats, senior officers or professional men of considerable stature (surgeons, concert violinists, etc). Fell out of favour with the Nazi regime in 1940 after refusing to play the title role in "Jud Süss". Resumed his career after the war as a character player, occasional stage director and translator of original French plays into German.

He made his film debut in 1934 and acted successful in "Fürst Woronzeff" (1934).

He was an actor, known for Stradivari (1935), Stützen der Gesellschaft (1935) and Der Spieler (1938). He was married to Anneliese Born.

His career ended abruptly in 1940 when he fell out of favor with the Nazi regime for refusing to play the title role in Jud Süß, an antisemitic propaganda film. From then on, he was cast in only a few films, and was forced in 1941 to participate in a Nazi propaganda film for children entitled Kopf hoch, Johannes! (Cheer Up, Johannes!). In this film, a teenage boy is spoiled hopelessly by his mother while his father is not around. Schoenhals plays a landowner who is bothered by the boy, and he is taught a sense of camaraderie. Following the film, Schoenhals withdrew from the theater to his estate in Baden-Baden, "Annenhof.".

From 1956 to 1968, Schoenhals was involved in many television productions.

From the early 1960s onward, he also devoted himself increasingly to his personal interests, such as French literature, a field in which he was an active translator and editor.

In 1965, Schoenhals received the German Film Award for "long-standing and outstanding achievements in German film.".

He played his last role in Luchino Visconti's "The Damned" (1968).