<p>Alexander Granach was born in 1893 in Werbowitz, a small village on the easternmost rim of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and would become one of Germany's most successful actors of both the stage and early cinema during the Weimar Republic. He appeared in seminal German expressionist cinema classics, most notably "Nosferatu" and, later in Hollywood, had supporting roles in films with Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, and Ingrid Bergman. "There Goes a Mensch" is his early life memoir, a work that has found lasting resonance and continued success over many editions in Germany since its initial publication in 1945. Written in Los Angeles under wartime curfew for German emigres, Granach recounts the first half of a life that took him from remote Jewish shtetls in Galicia to the most renown acting school in Berlin, where he began his rise to theatrical prominence and became known as the ¿Koenig der Ostjuden¿ (King of the Eastern Jews). The Great War would intervene and he survives the Italian front, war captivity, and an escape across the Alps before returning to the stage. Steeped in Weimar Berlin's dyna­mic artistic circles, Granach was a friend to and colleague of many of the great writers, directors, and actors of the period. Lion Feuchtwanger called him ¿the most expressionistic of all the expressionist-era actors¿ and others referred to him as a primordial force of nature. Finally available with numerous photos, this edition strives to maintain the Granach legacy, a work that Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann urged him to complete, providing both a self-portrait and a portrait of the eras and milieus that shaped him.</p>

There Goes a Mensch: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Granach, Alexander

Arts & Literature

Atara Press

From the Shtetl to the Stage: The Odyssey of a Wandering Actor

Alexander Granach, who died while he was acting on Broadway in 1945, brilliantly relates the remarkable story of his unlikely path from a poverty-stricken, rough-and-tumble childhood to success on the German stage. This is the account of a daring, curiosity-filled, and perceptive Jewish child from poor towns in Galicia who was seized with a passion for the theater when he saw his first show at the age of 14. He overcame great odds to become a leading stage and film actor in Weimar Germany - and he had to have both legs broken to do it! Born in what is now southern Ukraine, Granach began working at the age of six in his father's bakery, where his heavy tasks left him visibly knock-kneed. With very little formal education but open for adventure and willing to work hard, Alexander ran away several times, the last time to Berlin, at the age of 16, where his talent and charm won him a place in Max Reinhardt's theater school. His career was abruptly interrupted by World War I and his time as a prisoner of war in Italy, but after a daring escape and the end of the war he resumed his rise to prominence in German artistic life. A natural storyteller, Granach's autobiography captures equally the charms, adventures, and trials of his shtetl days, the horrors of trench warfare, and the glamour and excitement of the German theater before Hitler came to power.

Humor & Entertainment

Routledge

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