Biography:

Kurt Naumann was born in Biere, Germany, in 1948. After graduating from the Hans Otto Acting Academy in Leipzig, he played at theaters in Leipzig, Anklam, Chemnitz and Berlin. Since the beginning of the 1990, Naumann had performed at the Volksbühne Berlin where he played in a variety of spectacular productions by directors Frank Castorf (The Obscene Work: Caligula, 1999; Neustadt: The Idiot, 2002; The Master and Margarita, 2002; Cocaine, 2004) and the provocative Christoph Schlingensief (Kühnen 1994 – Bring Me Adolf Hitler’s Head!,1993).

Naumann was also known as a television and cinema actor. He is remembered by the audience for his leading role as Daniel Brenner, a young architect whose work is strangled by state restrictions, in Peter Kahane’s 1990 DEFA production, Die Architekten. Today, this film is appreciated as a historic document of an East German generation that tried to rebel against a country that did not offer any space for artistic and experimental creativity. The film has been screened at prestigious film festivals and premiered in the USA in the program Recent Films from Germany at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1991. The New York Times praised Naumann’s roles as “superbly acted.”

Kurt Naumann, who also taught at the Berlin Acting Studio, died in Berlin in 2018.