Biography:

Kurt Meisel was born in Vienna, Austria on August 18, 1912. After studying law, he joined the School for Performing Arts at the Volkstheater in Vienna. In 1937, he acted under the direction of Gustaf Gründgens at the Staatstheater in Berlin; he also performed in Munich, Vienna and Leipzig. In his films, Meisel specialized in portraying unlikeable, affected young men with weak characters. One of his first films, Schlussakkord (dir. Douglas Sirk), won the Best Musical Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1936. In Germany during the Nazi era, he acted in many propaganda films, including Veit Harlan’s Der grosse König and Kolberg.

Meisel’s first leading role after WWII was in Georg C. Klaren’s Wozzeck, followed by a role in Robert A. Stemmle’s adaptation of Erich Kästner’s Emil und die Detektive. He also appeared in Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die, which was nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Bear and a Golden Globe, as well as in Volker Schlöndorff’s Michael Kohlhaas – Der Rebell.

As of the 1940s, Meisel had also worked as a film director. Although his film Kriegsgericht (Court Martial, 1959), a drama about the 1942 British bombing of a German U-boat, was nominated for a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, he never attained as much success as a director as he did as an actor.  

After taking over as artistic director of the Staatsschauspiel in Munich from 1960 until 1964, Meisel directed fewer and fewer films. Before he returned to this theater as its director in 1972, he was the senior artistic director and associate director of the Burgtheater in Vienna.

Meisel, who was the son-in-law of the famous actor Theo Lingen, died in Vienna on April 4, 1994. The Kurt Meisel archive is housed at the Academy of Arts in Berlin.