Heute
schon gelacht?
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schon gelacht?
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| Leon
ASKIN | ||
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* September 18,
1907, Vienna, † June
3, 2005, Vienna Leo Aschkenasy was the first born of two sons of Samuel and Malvine Aschkenasy, who were regulars at the City Cafe. The father, an ardent social democrat who later increasingly devoted himself to Judaism, and mother were enthusiastic about music and theatre, and thus L.A.'s wish to become an actor was awakened at an early age. After completing school he worked for a time as a bookkeeper and later as a salesman. In addition he started taking acting lessons in adult evening school in 1925. His teachers there included Hans Thimig, with whom he also had private lessons, and Paul Kalbeck, later co-founder of the Reinhardt-Seminar. In May 1926 L.A. made his debut on the stage of the "Panspiele" in the Riemergasse with the actors of the "Theater der Jugend". In 1928 he began acting lessons at the Reinhardt-Seminar, which at that time was called as the "Neue Schule für dramatischen Unterricht" ("New School of Drama"), and from there he was engaged for a year by the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus (Düsseldorf Municipal Theatre), and following that at the Dumont-Schauspielhaus (Dumont Theatre) as an actor and director. After March 11, 1933, Aschkenasy, who had experienced earlier anti-Semitic excesses in Vienna, was put on "forced leave" from the theatre and subsequently he was also arrested. L.A. fled to Paris, tried to find work in theatre and finally started his career as a cabaret artist at the "Vienna-Paris Artist Club" where such other emigrants as Walter Mehring, Paul Dessau or Kurt Gerron were also employed. L.A. also brought about the idea of bilingual cabaret at "Les Sans Culottes" which, however, closed its doors soon after it opened. In 1935 L.A. returned to Vienna and through Jimmy Berg, the composer and lyricist of the "ABC", became the director and later the artistic director of "Brettl am Alsergrund in Cafe City". That same year Jura Soyfer also made his way to the "ABC", which from then on became the resident writer of the most biting political cabaret of the 1930s. L.A. subsequently became director and performer at "Lieber Augustin" and repeatedly interrupted his cabaret activities for theatre engagements. In March 1938 Aschkenasy had to flee again from Hitler's troops. He returned to live in Paris und worked among other things as Erwin Piscator's assistant director. In 1939 L.A. was sent to the internment camp at Meslay du Maine, where he did cabaret with Karl Farkas, among others. In February 1940 L.A. was released (he had an affidavit) and left France for America. In the US he began working as a stagehand in summer stock, actor, director in New York, and later was head of the semi-professional Washington Civic Theater, until he was finally drafted into the Army Air Force in 1942. That same year his parents were deported from Vienna to Theresienstadt. During the war years he married, was transferred to England, became an American citizen and has since been known as Leon Askin. Following the end of the war he appeared on stage in the New York theatre and in 1952 he made his first film in Hollywood, where he then made many films, among others with Billy Wilder. Askin gained great popularity with the television series "Hogan's Heroes" in which he played the role of a Nazi officer named General Burkhalter (towards the later 1960s). In 1955 he and Mimi divorced and he married Lies with whom he honeymooned in Europe. From that year on he began to work as an actor and director in Germany and later in Vienna. The U.S., however, was his main residence until 1994. After that Leon Askin returned to take up residence again in Vienna, but not without some bureaucratic obstacles. Leon
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| Leon Askin: http://www.askin.at | ||
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Eine Auswahl