Conrad Veidt

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Conrad Veidt in The Spy in Black (1939).

Conrad Veidt (January 22, 1893 – April 3, 1943) was a German actor, well known for his roles in such films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Casablanca (1942).

He was born Hans Walter Conrad Weidt in Potsdam, Germany. In the 27 years between 1916 and his death, he managed to act in well over 100 movies, some of them classics. His starring role in The Man Who Laughs (1928) was the inspiration for Batman's greatest enemy, The Joker. Veidt appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's pioneering homosexual-rights film Anders als die Andern ("Different from the Others", 1919) and in Das Land ohne Frauen (1929), Germany's first talking picture.

Veidt was known to have anti-Nazi beliefs, and he emigrated from Germany in 1933. Married twice before, he married a Jewish woman, Illona Prager, and a week afterward departed Germany forever. Settling in Britain he continued making films, notably three with director Michael Powell: The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Perhaps most tellingly, he also made the movie Jew Suss which was a satire of Nazi anti-Semitism. Although it was not a success with audiences, it did succeed in angering Josef Goebbels who banned all of Veidt's films from Germany.

He later moved to Hollywood, and starred in a few films, such as Nazi Agent - in which he had a dual role as a Nazi and as the Nazi's twin brother (better than it sounds). But he is most well known in this period for playing the Nazi Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1942). He died of a heart attack a year later, while playing golf in Los Angeles.