“With my books and interviews, I have repeatedly tried to raise people’s awareness of anti-Semitism and racism and to get them to (re)think and intervene. But it was no use. That’s a depressing balance sheet after 90 years life,” says Michael Degen in an interview with the FAZ. A dark cloud hovers over the celebrated actor who has been awarded the Kainz Medal, among other things: “Why did I survive?”
Born in Chemnitz in 1932 to Jewish parents, Degen was hidden from the National Socialists in eight different locations in Berlin for two years. His father died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1940 as a result of the torture he suffered.
In 1949 Degen emigrated to Israel, two years later he returned to Germany “because I longed for my mother, who had stayed in Berlin, and for my mother tongue.” He completed his acting training at the Deutsches Theater in what was then the Soviet sector of Berlin. From then on he played in the Bertolt Brecht ensemble and worked with directors such as George Tabori, Peter Zadek, Ingmar Bergman and Claude Chabrol.
It doesn’t matter to Degen that he only reached the large fan base through his roles in the TV productions “Traumschiff” or as Vice Questore in the ARD crime series “Donna Leon”: “You can’t live on art alone Actors complaining about becoming a crowd pleaser who’s either horribly conceited or terribly stupid or both.”
Degen’s autobiography Not All Were Murderers (1999) was filmed in 2006 for ARD. Nevertheless, Degen cites the 2015 novel “The Sad Prince” as his most personal book, in which he describes his encounter with Oskar Werner. “It wasn’t exactly flattering what he threw at me in one night,” says Degen. There was never a better “Homburg” than Werner’s, and “in ‘The Ship of Fools’ he more than deserved the Oscar”.
Degen himself is an important “Hamlet” actor, he has played this role more than 300 times. Even in his old age, he remained mobile: “Even before the pandemic began, my wife and I bought a mobile home. We were in Croatia in the fall and when the weather got worse there, we drove to Italy. Everything is comfortable in your own four walls, Corona-compliant and completely independent.”
Source: Nachrichten