Nikolaus Kinsky

Klaus Kinski (, born Klaus Günter Karl Nakszynski 18 October 1926 – 23 November 1991) was a German actor.

Klaus Günter Karl Nakszynski was born on 18 October 1926 in Zoppot, Free City of Danzig (now Sopot, Poland), to Polish-German parents.

His father, Bruno Nakszynski, worked as an opera singer before becoming a pharmacist, while his mother, Susanne Lutze, was a nurse and the daughter of a local pastor.

He had three older siblings; Inge, Arne and Hans-Joachim.

Due to the Great Depression, his family was unable to make a living in Danzig and moved to Berlin in 1931, where they also experienced financial difficulties.

The family settled in an apartment in the Schöneberg district of the city and acquired German citizenship.

In 1936, he began attending the in Schöneberg.

Kinski was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1943 at the age of 17, serving in a Fallschirmjäger unit.

He saw no action until the winter of 1944, when his unit was transferred to the German-occupied Netherlands and he was captured by the British Army on his second day of combat.

By May 1945, at the end of the war in Europe, the German POWs were anxious to return home.

Kinski had heard that sick prisoners were to be returned first, and tried to qualify by standing outside naked at night, drinking urine and eating cigarettes.

He remained healthy, however, and was returned to Germany in 1946.

Arriving in Berlin, he learned his father had died during the war, and his mother had been killed in an Allied air attack on the city.

After his return to Germany, Kinski started out as an actor, first at a small touring company in Offenburg, where he first used the name "Klaus Kinski".

In 1946, he was hired by the renowned Schlosspark-Theater in Berlin, but he was fired the following year due to his unpredictable behavior.

He found work at other theater companies thereafter, but his emotional volatility regularly got him into trouble.

Equally renowned for his intense performance style and notorious for his volatile personality, he appeared in over 130 film roles in a career that spanned 40 years, from 1948 to 1988.

Kinski's first film role was a small part in the 1948 film Morituri.

He appeared in several German Edgar Wallace movies, and had bit parts in the American war films Decision Before Dawn (1951), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), and The Counterfeit Traitor (1962).

For three months in 1955, Kinski lived in the same boarding house as a 13-year-old Werner Herzog, who would later direct him in a number of films.

In My Best Fiend, Herzog described how Kinski once locked himself in the communal bathroom for 48 hours and broke everything in the room.

In March 1956, he made a guest appearance at Vienna's Burgtheater in Goethe's Torquato Tasso.

Although respected by his colleagues, among them Judith Holzmeister, and cheered by the audience, Kinski did not gain a permanent contract after the Burgtheater's management became aware of his earlier difficulties in Germany.

Kinski then unsuccessfully tried to sue the company.

Living jobless in Vienna, Kinski reinvented himself as a monologist and spoken word artist.

He presented the prose and verse of François Villon, William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, amongst others, and toured Austria, Germany, and Switzerland with his shows.

During the 1960s and 1970s, he appeared in various European exploitation films, as well as more acclaimed works such as Doctor Zhivago (1965), in which he appeared as an anarchist prisoner on his way to the Gulag.

In Alfred Vohrer's Die toten Augen von London (1961), his character refused any personal guilt for his evil deeds and claimed to have only followed the orders given to him.

Kinski's performance reflected post-war Germany's reluctance to take responsibility for what had happened during World War II.

He is best known for starring in five films directed by Werner Herzog from 1972 to 1987 (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde), who would later chronicle their tumultuous relationship in the documentary My Best Fiend.

Kinski's roles spanned multiple genres, languages, and nationalities, including Spaghetti Westerns, horror films, war films, dramas, and Edgar Wallace krimi films.

His infamy was elevated by a number of eccentric creative endeavors, including a one-man show based on the life of Jesus Christ, a biopic of violinist Niccolò Paganini directed by and starring himself, and over twenty spoken word albums.

Kinski was prone to emotional and often violent outbursts aimed at his directors and fellow cast members, issues complicated by a history of mental illness.

Herzog described him as "one of the greatest actors of the century, but also a monster and a great pestilence."

Posthumously, he was accused of physically and sexually abusing his daughters Pola and Nastassja, themselves actresses.

His notoriety and prolific output has developed into a widespread cult following and a reputation as a popular icon.

In his 1988 autobiography, he claimed that he had decided to desert from the Wehrmacht and had been recaptured by German forces and sentenced to death in a court-martial before escaping and hiding in the woods, subsequently encountering a British patrol which shot him in the arm and captured him.

After being treated for his wounds and interrogated, he was transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in Colchester, Essex; the ship transporting him to Britain was torpedoed by a German U-boat but arrived safely.

In his documentary My Best Fiend, Werner Herzog claimed that Kinski had fabricated much of his 1988 autobiography, including claims of maternal sexual abuse, incest, and childhood poverty; according to Herzog, Kinski was actually raised in a financially stable upper middle class family.

While interned at Berechurch Hall in Colchester, Kinski played his first roles on stage, taking part in variety shows intended to maintain morale among the prisoners.