Emerging from a family of thirteen children, he trained at Munich’s Theaterschule Otto Königin in 1908-1909 and overcame a speech impediment to debut on stage in 1909, later joining Germany’s most prestigious theatres and collaborating with directors such as Bertolt Brecht and Max Reinhardt and actors like Albert Bassermann and Werner Krauss. After an early film debut in 1916 and work on Ernst Lub…
