Fritz Diez
Born: 1901-02-28 in Meiningen, Thuringia, Germany
Died: 1979-10-19
Known For: Acting
Biography
Fritz Diez was a German actor, producer, director and theater manager. Grew up in a poor family, started earning a living as a boy. He was a newspaper salesman, moonlighted on tennis courts, then learned to be an electrician. Graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Meiningen. Upon graduation, he was an actor in provincial theaters in Eisenach, Hanau, Flensburg, Eger, Baden-Baden. Fritz Dietz adhered to leftist views, so he emigrated with his wife to Switzerland in 1935. Played in theaters in Switzerland. In 1946 he returned to Germany. He worked as a general manager, actor and theater director in Dresden. Since the early 1960s at the Volksbühne Theater in Berlin. In the cinema since 1952 - "Shadow over the Islands" (Arne Roge, 1952). In 1955, for the first time, he played the role of Adolf Hitler in the famous film "Ernst Thalmann - the leader of his class". In 1967, he played the role of Hitler in two films of the DEFA studio at once. Soviet film director Yuri Ozerov invited Fritz Dietz to play the role of Hitler in the film epic "Liberation", but the actor was tired of portraying this image both in theater and in cinema, he was afraid of becoming a hostage to one role, and refused. Only under the influence of Erich Honecker, Fritz Dietz was forced to give his final consent to the performance of the role so hated by him. Fritz Dietz - the best performer of the role of Hitler of the XX century. An accurate psychological characterization of the character, an inflated and, at the same time, realistic drawing of the character of the Nazi leader - those features of Fritz Dietz's game that allowed him to play Hitler convincingly and non-cartoonically in the film epic "Liberation" (1968-1970). He played Hitler in the television series "Seventeen Moments of Spring" (1973), "Soldiers of Freedom" (1977) and other films. In 1980 Dietz's last film "Gluck im Hinterhaus" was released, in which he played the father of Karl Jägr.
Filmography
1980
1977
- Soldiers of Freedom as Adolf Hitler
1975
- Choice of Purpose as Hitler
1973
- Seventeen Moments of Spring as Adolf Hitler
- Der wunderbare Schatz
1971
- Liberation: The Last Assault as Hitler
- Liberation: Direction of the Main Blow as Hitler
- Liberation: The Battle of Berlin as Hitler
1970
- Liberation: The Fire Bulge as Hitler
- Liberation: Breakthrough as Hitler
- Tscheljuskin
1968
- Rote Bergsteiger as Kurt Kunst
- I, Justice as Hitler
1967
- Marketa Lazarová as Armiger (voice)
- Frozen Flashes as Adolf Hitler
1966
1965
- Der Staatsanwalt hat das Wort as Nölle
1963
- Carbide and Sorrel
- Carl von Ossietzky as Hellmut von Gerlach
- Ein Mann und sein Schatten
- Der Teufelstaler
1961
- Zwei Ziegen as (voice)
- Da helfen keine Pillen as Narrator (voice)
1960
- Five Cartridges as Major Balanos
- Zu jeder Stunde
- Die Entscheidung des Dr. Ahrendt
1959
- Ware für Katalonien as Captain Gerner
- The Punch Bowl
- Im Sonderauftrag as Lieutenant Wegner
- SAS 181 antwortet nicht
- Musterknaben
1956
- Thomas Müntzer as Feldhauptmann Hoffmann