Otto Wernicke

{{short description|German actor}}

File:Otto Wernicke A 2586-1 Tobis Ross-Verlag.jpg

Otto Karl Robert Wernicke (30 September 1893, Osterode am Harz – 7 November 1965) was a German actor. He is best known for his role as police inspector Karl Lohmann in the two Fritz Lang films M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.

Married to a Jewish woman, he was only able to continue working in Germany after the Nazi Party took power in 1933 because he received a special dispensation from the Reich Chamber of Culture.Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5, S. 659. In 1943, he portrayed Captain Smith in Titanic, the first film on the subject which was simply titled Titanic, and the first to combine various fictional characters and subplots with the true events of the sinking; both conventions went on to become a staple of Titanic films.{{cite book|author= Fiebing, Malte|title='Titanic: Nazi Germany's Version of the Disaster|year=2012|access-date=July 27, 2020|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=JcAkAQAAQBAJ&q=similarities+Titanic+1943+and+1997&pg=PA127|page=127|publisher=BoD – Books on Demand |isbn=9783844824261}} After being cast in 1944 in the propaganda epic Kolberg, he was added to the Gottbegnadeten-Liste, a list of artists considered crucial to Nazi culture which Joseph Goebbels compiled for Adolf Hitler's approval.

Selected filmography

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References

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