Fritz Diez

Born 1901-02-28 · Meiningen, Thuringia, Germany

Died 1979-10-19

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, Baden-Baden. 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 Dietz's game that allowed him to play Hitler convincingly and non-cartoonically in the film epic "Liberation" (1968-1970). He played Hitler in the television series "Seventeen Moments of Spring" (1973), "Soldiers of Freedom" (1977) and other films. In 1980 Dietz's last film "Gluck im Hinterhaus" was released, in which he played the father of Karl Jägr.