Hermann Lause

In 1963, Hermann Lause began acting as a distraction from his archaelogical studies. Within two years, he had made his theatrical debut and he remained a popular stage performer in classical and contemporary productions until shortly before his death in 2005. He worked regularly with director Peter Zadek, who gave Lause his big screen bow in the Knut Hamsun drama "Ice Age." However, he found his niche in studies of Germany's recent troubled past, as the father of a Hitler Youth in "Die Welt in jenem Sommer," the pessimistic scholar in Erich Kästner's Weimar satire "Fabian" and the banned 1930s writer in "Nach Mitternacht." In 1983, he reunited with Zadek for the 1950s economic miracle comedy, "Die wilden Fünfziger," and further demonstrated his comic gifts in the computer espionage caper "Peng! Du bist tot!" and "Schtonk," which chronicled the Hitler Diaries scandal. Five years later, Lause headlined an account of another infamous scam when he played bogus diplomat Edmund Dräcker in "Das Phantom von Bonn," but he spent much of the next decade guesting in long-running TV series like "Tatort," "Gro?stadtrevier/" and "Polizeiruf 110." He also drew plaudits for a pair of small-screen political dramas, as journalist Reiner Pfeiffer in the Barschel Affair reconstruction "Einmal Macht und zurück - Engholms Fall" and East German premier Erich Honecker in "Dicke Freunde." Towards the end of his career, Lause hooked up with director Fatih Akin for "Solino" and "Head-On," which won the Golden Bear at Berlin.