Charles Régnier

Family Life and upbringing

Regnier owed his name to his grandfather, a native Frenchman. Regnier was the first child of Anton Karl Regnier and Emile (Milly) Maria Friederike Harrer, born in Freiburg im Breisgau. His father was a general practitioner and Charles initially wished to become a doctor. It was his dream like his childhood idol, Albert Schweitzer, to travel the world and help people.

Charles Regnier grew up in Strasbourg and Badenweiler where his maternal grandparents owned the Schloss Hausbaden hotel. After his father's suicide in 1924, his mother moved with her four sons first to Heidelberg, and then to Montreux on Lake Geneva. When his mother contracted tuberculosis in 1929, the family decided to move to the sanatorium at Davos. Here, Charles met a number of celebrities, including the writer Alfred Henschke alias Klabund, who awakened Regnier's interest in literature and the theatre. Together with his brothers, Charles produced Klabund's comedy XYZ: For three actors in three acts for a performance in Klabund's private living room. His first acting performance was starring as the Countess Y in this piece. "As an actor I never again had the opportunity to play a lady, but often showed how one plays a lady," Regnier wrote in his personal memoirs.

Career

Regnier's first engagement was in 1938 at the theatre at Greifswald. Here he met actress and singer Pamela Wedekind, a daughter of the playwright Frank Wedekind. They married on June 21, 1941 in Berlin. In 1941, Regnier was invited by Otto Falckenberg to join the ensemble of the Munich Kammerspiele, where he remained until 1958. From 1946, Regnier worked as a drama teacher at the newly founded Otto-Falckenberg-Schule.

From 1961 to 1962 he was an ensemble member of the Wiener Burgtheater. Regnier preferred not to make a distinction between high art performances and entertainment, saying, “The public should find my work effective, entertaining, in short: agreeable.”

Regnier lived in Germany, Italy and Switzerland. He died on September 13, 2001 after suffering a stroke in Bad Wiessee. He was buried in the Badenweiler-Lipburg cemetery, close to his childhood home. ^[3]

His literary estate can be found in the archives of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin.^[4]