The great actor was 90 years old. Degen only spoke publicly regarding his survival as a child in hiding in the Holocaust.
Only a few of his fellow citizens in the old and new Federal Republic of Germany knew that the versatile actor Michael Degen, who always appeared confident, elegant and clever, even in the most trite of TV shows, was Jewish. He had started his career in 1946 as a 16-year-old at the Deutsches Theater in the then Soviet sector of Berlin, then went to Israel in 1949 at the request of his mother Anna, where he served during the war of liberation – however, Degen refused to carry weapons and refused to take the oath of allegiance .
After two years at a theater in Israel, he returned to Berlin and, still under Bertold Brecht at the Deutsches Theater, began a steep theatrical career from Cologne, via Frankfurt, Munich, Salzburg or Hamburg to Vienna, where he appeared in the Thomas Bernhard plays in 2010 and 2014 “Heldenplatz” and “I can’t think of anything regarding Hitler” were convincing. In between, Degen acted in a large number of classical and contemporary plays under important directors who, like George Tabori or Peter Zadek, were sometimes also Jewish. In addition, he became a permanent presence on television and occasionally in the cinema in the 1970s. Above all, roles in series hits from “Buddenbrooks” to “Die Drombuschs” to the ARD crime series “Donna Leon” made him an integral part of German life.
But it was only at an advanced age that the star, who later described himself in interviews as “broken”, was able to bring himself to a public debate regarding his Jewish origins and surviving as a child in hiding with his mother in Berlin. The result in 1999 was the sober-factual tone and occasional touches of humor so poignant memoirs “Not all were murderers”, which were filmed in 2006 for ARD.
He was born as a son of the linguist Jakob Degen (1900-1940) and his wife Anna in Chemnitz. The family soon moved to Berlin with him and his brother Adolf, who was eight years his senior. After the beginning of the war, Adolf’s parents were able to send him to Palestine via Denmark and Sweden. The father died in 1940 from being tortured by the Gestapo in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He and his mother stayed in Berlin, but then went into hiding in 1943 following a Gestapo raid. They had to change hiding places eight times and adopt false identities before they might stay in a summerhouse colony with the communists Marie-Luise and Carl Hotze until the end of the war Link.
In May 2009, the author of these lines experienced a conversation between Degen and the historian Cornelia Hecht from the “House of History Baden-Württemberg” at the “Laupheim Talks” regarding these years, which must have left a lasting impression on the deeply moved viewers. No matter how difficult it may have been for him to confront his own tale of woe, Degen has given younger generations in particular an open confrontation with Nazi crimes as a task. But as the title of his memoir says, simple conclusions will remain unthinkable.
Degen died in Munich on Saturday. As President of the Jewish Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch explained: “It was with great sadness that I learned of Michael Degen’s death. With him we are losing a great actor, a fine person and finally another important contemporary witness of the Nazi era.” For Knobloch, Degen’s memoirs are “among the most important autobiographical descriptions of survival in Germany. In addition, Michael Degen was an institution on the stages and television screens of our country and also repeatedly dealt with the events of the Nazi era in the artistic field. He knew how to present a few, demanding topics for the audience just as vividly and convincingly as light entertainment. We will miss his expression, his great presence and his important voice of remembrance.”
