Biography:

Martin Brandt was born to a Jewish family on May 7, 1903 in Landsberg an der Warthe, Germany (now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland). He began his career in the theater, performing in Bamberg, Stuttgart, and Koblenz in the 1920s, before moving to Berlin in 1933.

Soon after the Nazis came to power, he was prohibited from performing due to his Jewish ancestry. He joined the Jewish Kulturbund Theater in Berlin in 1933, where his first role was as Sultan Saladin in the Theater’s inaugural production, G.E. Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise) on October 1, 1933.

In 1941, Brandt emigrated from Germany and settled in New York, where he performed at the Deutsches Theater and on Broadway. In the 1950s, his film career took off, and he acted in numerous Hollywood movies and American television series. He was part of the star-studded cast of Stanley Kramer’s 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg, which featured Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, and Montgomery Clift; the film was nominated for eleven Oscars and won two Golden Globes. In 1965, he acted alongside Marlon Brando and Yul Brynner in Bernhard Wicki’s WWII film, Morituri.

Brandt returned to West Berlin in 1965, where he worked as a theater actor at the Freie Volksbühne and Schaubühne. Brandt also continued to perform in films set during the Second World War, including The Odessa File and the TV mini-series Holocaust. The 1989 documentary Spuren by Eduard Schreiber features this unforgettable German actor, who died on October 28, 1989 in West Berlin.

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