Paul Wegener - Life Under The Nazi Regime

Life Under The Nazi Regime

When in 1933 the National Socialists came to political prominence, theatre companies were disbanded and many of the actors and directors were arrested, persecuted or exiled. However Wegener became an actor of the state and appeared in Nazi propaganda films such as Mein Leben für Irland in 1941 and Kolberg, a 1944–45 propaganda film epic about the Napoleonic Wars. In reality he made an anti-Nazi stance by donating money to resistance groups, hiding vulnerable people in his apartment and writing anti-Hitler slogans on walls. As the war closed Wegener was one of the first to rebuild cultural life in Berlin. Despite ill-health he became president of an organisation to improve standards for its inhabitants.

Read more about this topic:  Paul Wegener

Famous quotes containing the words life, nazi and/or regime:

    Young, and so thin, and so straight.
    So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
    But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
    Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
    And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
    Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.
    Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)

    I always draw a parallel between oppression by the regime and oppression by men. To me it is just the same. I always challenge men on why they react to oppression by the regime, but then they do exactly the same things to women that they criticize the regime for.
    Sethembile N., South African black anti-apartheid activist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 19, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)