I came across a fascinating article, “Die Heldenrolle un das verpasste Leben”, by Simone Schmollack. The article contrasts the fiction and reality by viewing the life and drama of the life of an East German-born actor, Peter Koehnke.
This article was in the Rhein-Main Press Journal this weekend and began with a visit to the filming of the Tom Cruise film, OPERATION WALKUERE.
On that evening, a friend of the family von Stauffenberg had asked Peter Koehnke to tag along to the shooting at the place in Berlin where von Stauffenberg had actually been shot by the Nazis.
Peter Koehnke is the only living German actor to have ever played the German General Claus von Stauffenberg in a German movie. Koehnke played the main role in an East Germany in a film in 1964. That film had made Koehnke famous in both West and East Germany.
Alas, that very year that East German film came out, i.e. in 1964, Peter Koehnke got himself on the bad side of the Stasi and East German cinema and theatre. This is because the theater piece, DIE STELLVERTRETER, was being performed in Berlin, Koehnke found himself playing the Jesuit Priest Father Riccardo Fontana.
The then-popular and religious East German actor had been told explicitly to perform the role in a certain unsympathetic manner, but when he got on stage, Koehnke turned to the audience and with cry of unfairness in his voice and asked, “Look at me! Am I such an ‘Untermensch’??”
Interestingly, the play, DIE STELLVERTRETER, is the dramatic portrayal of an imaginary trial of the Pope Pius XII, who is now again at the center of controversy in Germany, Europe and the catholic church.
The intention of the playwright was to discuss the guilt of Pius XII during the Nazi Dictatorship, i.e. in not helping more the Jews and other victims of Fascist crimes.
By the way, the subtitle for this play in English is “A Christian Tragedy.”
It was written by Rolf Hochhuth had been performed in Berlin since 1963.
NOT PERMITTED TO ACT ABROAD ANY MORE
Although his acting career was not over by any means after 1964, both the Stasi and East German State Theater and cinema made it next-to-impossible for Peter Koehnke to get parts aboad after that date. Meanwhile, in his own country he was seldom given star billing in theatre projects, which were often to a great degree.controlled via internal censorship.
Although the christian actor, Koehnke, was never officially gagged as an actor—banned from performing in public--during the next three decades, he was often harassed. For example, money was secretly taken from his bank account, i.e. it was overdrawn, and he was then publically charged with fraud and for other crimes.Besides being financially broke, Peter Koehnke had other troubles which kept him from fleeing to the West over the decades—if he’d had ever taken the chance. The greatest problem through 1988 was that Peter Koehnke’s wife had died when his own child was quite young. So, he stayed on to raise his son as a single parent.
In short, from the mid-1970s on Koehnke had refused to flee the East German land even after his wife passed away because he really feared for what might become of his son after he would escape.
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