Friedrich Gustav Maximilian "Max" Schreck (6 September 1879 – 20 February 1936) was a German actor. He is most often remembered for his lead role as Count Orlok in the film Nosferatu (1922).
Max Schreck was born in Berlin-Friedenau, on 6 September 1879. Six years later his father bought a house in the independent rural community of Friedenau, then part of the district of Teltow.
His father saw Schreck's ever-growing enthusiasm for theater and did not approve. His mother provided the boy with money, which he used to secretly take acting lessons. Only after the death of his father did he attend drama school. After graduating, he travelled briefly across the country with Demetrius Schrutz.
Schreck had engagements in Mulhouse, Meseritz, Speyer, Rudolstadt, Erfurt and Weissenfels, and his first extended stay at the Gera Theater. Greater engagements followed, especially in Frankfurt am Main. From there he went to Berlin for Max Reinhardt and the Munich Chamber Games for Otto Falkenberg. From then on he began to work in films.
Gustav von Wangenheim (February 18, 1895 – August 5, 1975) was a German actor, screenwriter and director.
Wangenheim was born Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von Wangenheim in Wiesbaden, Hesse, to parents Eduard Clemens Freiherr von Wangenheim and Minna Mengers. Both of his parents were performers; his father, who used the stage name Eduard von Winterstein, appeared in over 200 films between 1910 and 1960.
Wangenheim made his screen debut in 1914 in Passionels Tagebuch and went on to star in many silent features. Among his works were Fritz Lang's early science fiction film Frau im Mond, where he portrayed Windegger, and Karl Heinz Martin's Das Haus zum Mond. In 1921, Wangenheim was cast in what would prove to be his most enduring role, that of Thomas Hutter (Jonathan Harker) in F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu.
A member of the Communist Party of Germany since 1921, Wangenheim founded the Communist theatre company Die Truppe '31 in 1931. Die Truppe '31 produced three plays, authored and directed by Wangenheim, before it was shut down by order of the Nazi regime in 1933.
Greta Schröder (27 June 1892 – 13 April 1967) was a German actress. She is best known for the role of Thomas Hutter's wife and victim to Count Orlok in the 1922 silent film Nosferatu. In the fictionalized 2000 film, Shadow of the Vampire, she is portrayed as having been a famous actress during the making of Nosferatu, but in fact she was little known. The bulk of her career was during the 1920s, and she continued to act well into the 1950s, but by the 1930s her roles had diminished to only occasional appearances. Following a failed marriage with struggling actor Ernst Matray, she was married to actor and film director Paul Wegener until his death in 1948.
as Actress:
Alexander Granach (April 18, 1893 – March 14, 1945) was a popular German actor in the 1920s and 1930s who later migrated to the United States.
Granach was born Jessaja Gronach in Werbowitz (Wierzbowce/Werbiwci) (Horodenka district, Austrian Galicia then, now Verbivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine), to Jewish parents and rose to theatrical prominence at the Volksbühne in Berlin. Granach entered films in 1922; among the most widely exhibited of his silent efforts was the vampire classic Nosferatu (1922), in which the actor was cast as Knock, the lunatic counterpart to Renfield, effectively a substitute name for Dracula. He co-starred in such major early German talkies as Kameradschaft (1931).
The Jewish Granach fled to the Soviet Union when Hitler came to power. When the Soviet Union also proved inhospitable, he settled in Hollywood, where he made his first American film appearance as Kopalski in Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939). Granach proved indispensable to film makers during the war years, effectively portraying both dedicated Nazis (he was Julius Streicher in The Hitler Gang, 1944) and loyal anti-fascists. Perhaps his best role was as Gestapo Inspector Alois Gruber in Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! (1943). His last film appearance was in MGM's The Seventh Cross (1944), in which almost the entire supporting cast was prominent European refugees.
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (translated as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror; or simply Nosferatu) is a 1922 German Expressionist horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok.
The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok"). Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. However, a few prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema. As of 2015, it is Rotten Tomatoes' second best-reviewed horror film of all time.
Thomas Hutter lives in the fictitious German city of Wisborg. His employer, Knock, sends Hutter to Transylvania to visit a new client named Count Orlok. Hutter entrusts his loving wife Ellen to his good friend Harding and Harding's sister Annie, before embarking on his long journey. Nearing his destination in the Carpathian mountains, Hutter stops at an inn for dinner. The locals become frightened by the mere mention of Orlok's name and discourage him from traveling to his castle at night, warning of a werewolf on the prowl. The next morning, Hutter takes a coach to a high mountain pass, but the coachmen decline to take him any further than the bridge as nightfall is approaching. A black-swathed coach appears after Hutter crosses the bridge and the coachman gestures for him to climb aboard. Hutter is welcomed at a castle by Count Orlok. When Hutter is eating dinner and accidentally cuts his thumb, Orlok tries to suck the blood out, but his repulsed guest pulls his hand away.
The name "Nosferatu" has been presented as possibly an archaic Romanian word, synonymous with "vampire". However, it was largely popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Western fiction such as Dracula, and the film Nosferatu. Suggested etymology of the term might be derived from the Romanian Nesuferitu ("the insufferable/repugnant one") or Necuratu ("the unclean one, spiritus immundus"), terms typically used in vernacular Romanian to designate Satan (the Devil).
The etymological origins of the word nosferatu are difficult to determine. There is no doubt that it achieved popular currency through Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula and its unauthorised cinematic adaptation, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922). Stoker identified his source for the term as 19th-century British author and speaker Emily Gerard. It is commonly thought that Gerard introduced the word into print in an 1885 magazine article, "Transylvanian Superstitions", and in her travelogue The Land Beyond the Forest ("Transylvania" is Latin for "beyond the forest", literally "across/through the forest"). She merely refers to it as the Romanian word for vampire: "More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Roumanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in Heaven or Hell." However, the word had already appeared in an 1865 German-language article by Wilhelm Schmidt. Schmidt's article discusses Transylvanian customs and appeared in an Austro-Hungarian magazine, which Gerard could have encountered as a reviewer of German literature living in Austria-Hungary. Schmidt's article also mentions the legendary Scholomance by name, which parallels Gerard's "Transylvanian Superstitions". Schmidt does not identify the language explicitly, but he puts the word nosferatu in a typeface which indicates it to be a language other than German.
Nosferatu is an English second wave gothic rock band. In 2014 the members are Tim Vic (vocals and guitar), Gonzo (vocals), Damien DeVille' (lead guitar), Stefan Diablo (bass) and Belle Starr (drums).
Nosferatu was formed in March 1988 by Damien DeVille, Vlad Janicek, and Sapphire Aurora. Janicek played bass guitar/keys until November 1994, and designed the first Nosferatu Logo and stage sets. Aurora provided vocals until April 1990, after which Gary Ash (Gary Clarke) sang briefly with the band until October of that year. In 1991 vocals were provided by Louis DeWray, who remained until April 1993. Chris Clark joined the band briefly in 1994 on drums. Niall Murphy then sang with the band until November 1994, and Dominic LaVey provided vocals from March 1995 to February 2002.
Louis DeWray returned as a vocalist in 2003, having performed in the meantime with Fashionable Living Death and his own band Ditzy Micro. He also played guitar, bass, keyboard and percussion in the band at various times until December 2014. He also contributed to the songwriting and instrumentation of the 2011 Wonderland album, which was developed over a seven year period.
Dark angel, give me life,
Dark angel, take us high,
Give me heaven, give me gold,
Take the living, take the old,
Take the knife, break the bone,
Feel the blade, and feel the stone.
Dark angel, a cold come through to us.
Dance into the darkness, a hand from southern skies,
Know which way the door will close and wait for the surprise.
And they will come,
And they will dream,
And they still live,
To take this heaven, And a cut of mine.
Dark angel, cut the skin,
Love the red delight,
Kneel at the moonsign,
Bless this gift for you,
Cry at the moonsign and bless this gift for you.
Seventeen sounds break the chains,
Three wheels, three worlds,
A kiss goodbye and a kiss for sorrow,
Fly fly fly away.
Dark angel, in the light of your eyes.
Dark angel, in the light of the moon.
Dark angel, in the light of the punishment.
Dark angel, can you believe,
Dark angel, in the splitting of a second your life did shine.
And they will come,
And they will dream,
And they still live,