German actor survived camps, starred in scores of films
Erwin Geschonneck, a German actor who spent years in Nazi concentration camps for his communist sympathies and went on to star in scores of East German films, died Wednesday, the country's Academy of Arts said. He was 101.
Mr. Geschonneck's "engaging artistic and political efforts were recognized with the highest international acclaim for decades," the organization said in a statement.
It said that the biography of Mr. Geschonneck, who died at his Berlin apartment, "is a window into a century of German history."
Mr. Geschonneck, the son of a cobbler, was born in East Prussia on Dec. 27, 1906, and grew up in Berlin.
He joined the Communist Party in 1919 and spent years with theater groups that performed agitprop, with workers' choirs and in a young people's theater.
He made his big- screen debut in 1931 as an extra in Slatan Dudows' Kuhle Wampe, a film about unemployment in the Weimar Republic written by famed playwright and director Bertolt Brecht.
After the Nazis rose to power in 1933, Geschonneck went into exile in the Soviet Union, settling in Odessa where he worked in a German-language collective theater until he was expelled in 1938.
He ended up in Prague, where he was arrested by the SS in 1939 after the Nazis took over, then thrown into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin.
During the war, he also was imprisoned in the Dachau and Neuengamme camps. Just days before the end of the war, he was being transported aboard the Cap Arcona - a prewar luxury liner that had been commandeered by the German navy - along with about 4,000 other concentration camp inmates when it was sunk by the Royal Air Force in the Baltic. Many of those who were not killed in the attack were gunned down by the SS as they tried to swim ashore.
Mr. Geschonneck was one of 350 who survived, and his story later would be made into the 1982 East German television film Der Mann von der Cap Arcona - "The Man of the Cap Arcona" - in which he also acted.
Mr. Geschonneck resumed acting in 1946 in Hamburg in the theater and also took on several supporting film roles.
In 1949, he moved to East Berlin and joined Brecht's Berliner Ensemble theater troupe, where he gained national attention.
He acted in his first film for DEFA - East Germany's state-run film agency - in 1950 and later decided to concentrate all of his efforts on the screen, rising to become one of East Germany's best-known actors with scores of films to his credit. He won several awards for his work.
Erwin Geschonneck, German actor died Wednesday. He was 101. His biggest success occurred in the German Democratic Republic, where he was considered one of the most famous actors of the time.

He was born on December 27, 1906 in Bartenstein, Germany. In 1938, he was arrested in Prague and was imprisoned in several concentration camps. In 1945, Geschonneck was evacuated from the concentration camp Neuengamme on the boat Cap Arcona, which was subsequently attacked by the RAF and sunk. He was one of the few prisoners who survived.

Immediately following the war, Geschonneck acted in theaters in Hamburg, Germany, and made his film debut in 1947 in ''In jenen Tagen''.

His last movie, made in 1995 for the German television network ARD, was "Matulla und Busch", where he played alongside veteran actor Fred Delmare. Geschonneck's son, Matti Geschonneck, directed.