Fritz Rasp

Life and career

Fritz Heinrich Rasp was the thirteenth child of a county surveyor. He was educated from 1908-1909 at the Theaterschule Otto Königin in Munich. He made his stage debut in 1909, after he successfully overcame a speech impediment. During his long career, the character actor appeared in some of the most famous theatres in Germany, working with acclaimed directors like Bertolt Brecht and Max Reinhardt and famous actors like Albert Bassermann, Joseph Schildkraut and Werner Krauss. Rasp made an early film debut in 1916 and appeared in some early films by his friend, director Ernst Lubitsch. With his "gaunt, ascetic looks", Rasp played numerous scoundrels or shady characters during the Golden Age of German cinema in the 1920s. He is considered to be one of the most successful film villains in German film history.

Some of Rasp's more notable film roles were "J. J. Peachum" in The Threepenny Opera (1931), as the reckless seducer Meinert in Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), as Mr. Brocklehurst in Orphan of Lowood (1926), an early German adaptation of Jane Eyre, and as the bank robber Grundeis in Emil and the Detectives (1931). He also portrayed the mysterious "Der Schmale" ("The Thin Man") in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Many of the scenes in the latter film in which he appears are part of the Metropolis footage long believed lost until their recovery in 2008. In his later years, Rasp also appeared in numerous Edgar Wallace films. In one of his last films, Bernhard Sinkel's comedy-drama Lina Braake (1975), Rasp starred against-type as a likable pensioner who steals money from an unscrupulous bank.

Fritz Rasp was awarded with the Filmband in Gold in 1963 for his outstanding work for the German film. One of his children was writer Renate Rasp (1935-2015).