Fritz Diez

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 BadenBaden 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 Dietzs game that allowed him to play Hitler convincingly and noncartoonically in the film epic Liberation 19681970 He played Hitler in the television series Seventeen Moments of Spring 1973 Soldiers of Freedom 1977 and other films In 1980 Dietzs last film Gluck im Hinterhaus was released in which he played the father of Karl Jägr