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Bruno Ganz 1941 - 2019

Bruno Ganz was born on March 22, 1941 in Seebach Switzerland, and died at age 77 years old on February 16, 2019 at Au. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Bruno Ganz.

Bruno Ganz

March 22, 1941

Seebach, Switzerland

February 16, 2019

Au in , Switzerland

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Bruno Ganz Bruno Ganz (1941 - 2019)

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Bruno Ganz's History: 1941 - 2019

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Introduction

Famous Swiss Actor. Born: March 22, 1941, Seebach, Switzerland Died: February 16, 2019, Au, Switzerland Bruno Ganz Born March 22, 1941 in Zürich-Seebach, Switzerland Died February 16, 2019 in Zürich, Switzerland (cancer) Nickname Der Engel Height 5' 6" (1.68 m) Mini Bio (2) Bruno Ganz was an acclaimed Swiss actor who was a prominent figure in German language film and television for over fifty years. He is internationally renowned for portraying Adolf Hitler in the Academy Award-nominated film Downfall (2004). Ganz was born in Zürich, to a Swiss mechanic father and a northern Italian mother. He decided to pursue an acting career by the time he entered university. He debuted at the theatre in 1961, and gained a reputation as a reflective, charismatic and technically brilliant stage actor. In 1970, he and Peter Stein founded the theatre company 'Schaubühne' in Berlin, Germany. On stage, Ganz portrayed Dr. Heinrich Faust in Peter Stein's staging of Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two in 2000. In cinema, Ganz became one of the best-known and most acclaimed actors in the German language, collaborating with many of the most respected European actors and directors of his time. He also starred in international features that reached a global audience. His film debut was The Gentleman in the Black Derby (1960). He also starred in Unknown (2011), The Counselor (2013), and The Party (2017). Ganz died from cancer on 16 February 2019 at his home in the village of Au, in Wädenswil, Switzerland. Spouse (1) Sabine Ganz (1965 - 16 February 2019) ( his death) ( 1 child) Trade Mark (3) Frequently played reflective, troubled characters Charming smile Gentle voice and friendly persona Trivia (16) Son of a Swiss worker and his Northern Italian wife. Inherited the mysterious Iffland-Ring from Josef Meinrad, which is given to the most important actor of German speaking theater since over 200 years. In his testament, Ganz declared that the German actor Jens Harzer should be the next recipient. Once he was offered the leading role in Pretty Woman (1990), but he ultimately turned it down. His son Daniel was born in 1972. Lived in his hometown Zurich with homes in Venice and Berlin. Played the leading character in the 11-hour stage performance of "Faust I" and "Faust II" (2000) directed by Peter Stein at the 2000 Expo in Hanover, Germany. This legendary performance was also shown on TV in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust I (2001) (directed by Peter Schönhofer) and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust II (2001) (directed by Thomas Grimm). Chosen "Actor of the Year" in 1973 by "Theater heute" magazine for his role in "Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige" at the Salzburg Theater Festival. His longtime companion was the photographer Ruth Walz. He was in a relationship with Romy Schneider at the beginning of the 70s. In his almost six decades long film career he collaborated with 3 Academy Award-winning directors (Franklin J. Schaffner, Jonathan Demme and Francis Ford Coppola) and 6 directors who were nominated for 'Best Director' (Wolfgang Petersen, Stephen Daldry, Ridley Scott, Barbet Schroeder, Atom Egoyan and Terrence Malick). He also worked with 2 directors, who won the Academy Award for 'Best Foreign Language Film' (Volker Schlöndorff and Bille August) and another 5 directors who were nominated for it (Hans W. Geissendörfer, Claude Goretta, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Uli Edel). Additionally, he worked with 5 directors, who were nominated in other categories (Éric Rohmer, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, David Hare and Lars von Trier). Acted in 3 features nominated for the 'Best Foreign Language Film' Academy Award (Children of Nature (1991), Downfall (2004) and The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)) and in 1 feature nominated for 'Best Picture' (The Reader (2008)). His performance as the angel Damiel in Wings of Desire (1987) became so iconic, that he could make a short and silent appearance as the same character in Children of Nature (1991) without confusing the audience. Later, he would reprise the role in the sequel Faraway, So Close! (1993). His last name meant "whole" in German. President of the German Film Academy (alongside actress Iris Berben) from 2010 to 2013. Starred in both of the 2 features that Austrian novelist, playwright and Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke directed for cinema: The Left-Handed Woman (1977) and The Absence (1992). He was one of the most prominent actors of the 'New German Cinema' and worked together with most of its key directors: Haro Senft, Hans W. Geissendörfer, Wim Wenders, Peter Handke, Reinhard Hauff, Werner Herzog, Harun Farocki, Volker Schlöndorff, Alexander Kluge and Rudolf Thome. Personal Quotes (3) [on his performance in Downfall (2004)] Ultimately, I could not get to the heart of Hitler because there was none. [on Downfall (2004)] What people need is for Hitler to actually represent evil itself. But what is evil itself? That means nothing to me. I have to perform a living human being. (...) We know how to judge Hitler. We don't need another film that condemns him. We already know where we stand on this. I mean, there is certainly no sympathy for Hitler in the film. [Irish Times, 2005] [recounting how people ascribed special powers to him when they recognized him in public, because of playing the angel Damiel in Wings of Desire (1987)] People in planes said: 'Ah, no need to be afraid, because with you here, nothing can happen. Now we are safe.' Or a mother said to her child: 'Look, there's your guardian angel.' They weren't joking.
03/22

1941

Birthday

March 22, 1941

Birthdate

Seebach Switzerland

Birthplace

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Professional Career

Film Star. n his almost six decades long film career he collaborated with 3 Academy Award-winning directors (Franklin J. Schaffner, Jonathan Demme and Francis Ford Coppola) and 6 directors who were nominated for 'Best Director' (Wolfgang Petersen, Stephen Daldry, Ridley Scott, Barbet Schroeder, Atom Egoyan and Terrence Malick). He also worked with 2 directors, who won the Academy Award for 'Best Foreign Language Film' (Volker Schlöndorff and Bille August) and another 5 directors who were nominated for it (Hans W. Geissendörfer, Claude Goretta, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Uli Edel). Additionally, he worked with 5 directors, who were nominated in other categories (Éric Rohmer, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, David Hare and Lars von Trier). Acted in 3 features nominated for the 'Best Foreign Language Film' Academy Award (Children of Nature (1991), Downfall (2004) and The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)) and in 1 feature nominated for 'Best Picture' (The Reader (2008)). His performance as the angel Damiel in Wings of Desire (1987) became so iconic, that he could make a short and silent appearance as the same character in Children of Nature (1991) without confusing the audience. Later, he would reprise the role in the sequel Faraway, So Close! (1993). His last name meant "whole" in German. President of the German Film Academy (alongside actress Iris Berben) from 2010 to 2013. Starred in both of the 2 features that Austrian novelist, playwright and Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke directed for cinema: The Left-Handed Woman (1977) and The Absence (1992). He was one of the most prominent actors of the 'New German Cinema' and worked together with most of its key directors: Haro Senft, Hans W. Geissendörfer, Wim Wenders, Peter Handke, Reinhard Hauff, Werner Herzog, Harun Farocki, Volker Schlöndorff, Alexander Kluge and Rudolf Thome. Personal Quotes (3) [on his performance in Downfall (2004)] Ultimately, I could not get to the heart of Hitler because there was none. [on Downfall (2004)] What people need is for Hitler to actually represent evil itself. But what is evil itself? That means nothing to me. I have to perform a living human being. (...) We know how to judge Hitler. We don't need another film that condemns him. We already know where we stand on this. I mean, there is certainly no sympathy for Hitler in the film. [Irish Times, 2005] [recounting how people ascribed special powers to him when they recognized him in public, because of playing the angel Damiel in Wings of Desire (1987)] People in planes said: 'Ah, no need to be afraid, because with you here, nothing can happen. Now we are safe.' Or a mother said to her child: 'Look, there's your guardian angel.' They weren't joking.
02/16

2019

Death

February 16, 2019

Death date

Cancer

Cause of death

Au in Switzerland
Death location

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Obituary

Bruno Ganz, Who Played an Angel and Hitler, Is Dead at 77 Bruno Ganz was born in Zurich, the son of a Swiss mechanic and his Italian wife. Feb. 16, 2019 Bruno Ganz, the melancholy Swiss film actor who played an angel longing for the visceral joys of mortality in “Wings of Desire” and a defeated Hitler with trembling hands facing his own mortality in “Downfall,” died on Friday at his home in Zurich. He was 77. The death was confirmed by his agent, Patricia Baumbauer. Mr. Ganz received a diagnosis of colon cancer last summer while he was working at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. Mr. Ganz won the Donatello Award, Italy’s Oscar equivalent, for his role as a quiet, poetic waiter who bonds with a runaway homemaker in “Bread and Tulips” (2000), an Italian-Swiss comic drama, but most of his work was in German-language films. In the Wim Wenders drama “Wings of Desire” (1987), he played an angel whose job was to spend time on earth, make himself visible to the dying and to comfort them. But the character saw such beauty in human life that he wanted it for himself. Perhaps his most talked-about role was as Hitler in “Downfall” (2004), the first major German work to present a portrayal of the Nazi leader. “Nothing prepared me for what must be the most convincing screen Hitler yet,” Rob Mackie wrote in his review of “Downfall” in The Guardian. “An old, bent, sick dictator with the shaking hands of someone with Parkinson’s, alternating between rage and despair in his last days in the bunker.” Most of Mr. Ganz’s more than 80 films and television movies were European productions, among them Mr. Wenders’s film noir hommage “The American Friend” (1977), with Dennis Hopper, in which he played a German with a terminal-illness diagnosis who agrees to be a hit man; Volker Schlöndorff’s “Circle of Deceit” (1981), as a war correspondent in Beirut; Werner Herzog’s “Nosferatu” (1979), as the innocent Jonathan Harker; and Barbet Schroeder’s “Amnesia” (2017). But he did appear in American films, including “The Boys From Brazil” (1978), the drama about Nazi war criminals starring Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier; Jonathan Demme’s all-star 2004 remake of “The Manchurian Candidate”; and “The Reader” (2008), with Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet. There was strong reaction to his portrayal of Hitler (including a slew of angry-führer internet memes), but Mr. Ganz always insisted he was the mildest-mannered of introverts. “I like to walk. I like to read. I like to watch people,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2005. “I’m very curious.” Bruno Ganz was born in Zurich on March 22, 1941, the son of a Swiss mechanic and his Italian wife. He decided on an acting career early and never attended college. His first roles were in stage productions in the 1960s, and in 1970 he was a founder of a theater company, Schaubühne. “It was definitely left-wing theater,” he told The Irish Times in 2005. Stage roles over the years included Hamlet (in 1965 and again in 1982), Alceste in “The Misanthrope” (1987) and Max in a French translation of Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” (2012, in Paris). When he played the title role of “Faust” in a Goethe marathon in Germany in 2001, John Rockwell of The Times proclaimed him “an undeniable presence.” Mr. Ganz made his film debut as a hotel employee in “The Man in the Black Derby” (1961), a Swiss comedy, and was still busily making films in his late 70s. In 2018 alone, he starred in Sally Potter’s comic drama “The Party”; Terrence Malick’s “Radegund,” about an Austrian conscientious objector; “The Tobacconist,” as Sigmund Freud; “I Witness,” an action drama; and “The House That Jack Built,” a serial-killer drama directed by Lars von Trier. Mr. Ganz separated from Sabine Ganz, whom he married in 1965 but appeared never to have divorced. He is survived by his partner, the theatrical photographer Ruth Walz, and a son, Daniel, born in 1972. By many standards, the greatest honor Mr. Ganz received was possession of the Iffland-Ring, a diamond-studded piece of jewelry named for an 18th-century German actor and given to the “most significant and most worthy actor of the German-speaking theater.” When he received it in 1996, as a bequest from his predecessor, Josef Meinrad, he was only the fifth actor to have held it since the 1870s. Mr. Ganz admitted that his convincing performances seemed to transcend reality for some fans. “People really seemed to think of me as a guardian angel” after “Wings of Desire,” he told The Irish Times in 2005. “People would bring their children before me for a blessing or something.” But those fans appeared to have misinterpreted his character’s purpose and powers. “When flying on aeroplanes,” he continued, “they would sometimes say, ‘Now you are with us, nothing can happen.’ It was very funny.”

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Bruno Ganz lived 1 year longer than the average family member when died at the age of 77.

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