Moissi: Triest, Berlin, New York, eine Schauspielerlegende. By Rüdiger Schaper. Berlin: Argon, 2000; pp. 255. DM 39.90.

Abstract

This book is a great read for a number of reasons, the most significant of which is the author's demonstration that Alexander Moissi (Alessandro Moissi, 1879–1935) was the German-speaking theatre's first modern actor. That dubious distinction Moissi may have shared with Josef Kainz, Alexander Granach, Peter Lorre, and a few others, but there is little doubt that Moissi was among the twentieth century's first German-speaking superstars. Unlike most of the great German actors before him, Moissi was not a native German speaker. He was born in Albania, grew up speaking Greek and Italian, and had a lucrative career that spanned four decades in thousands of performances all over the world. In none of those performances did Moissi lose the Mediterranean inflections in the language of Goethe and Schiller. But that did not diminish his stature; it enhanced it. Near the end of his career, film director Ernst Lubitsch approached him in Hollywood to plead, “Herr Moissi, please allow me to embrace you, so that people will think I am somebody!”