Mathias Wieman (néeCarl Heinrich Franz Mathias Wieman; 23 June 1902 – 3 December 1969) was a German stage-performer, silent-and-sound motion picture actor.
Life and career
Early life
Wieman was born in Osnabrück, the only son of Carl Philipp Anton Wieman and his wife Louise. Raised in Osnabrück, Wiesbaden and Berlin, where he studied four terms of philosophy, history of art and languages, Wieman wanted to actually become an airplane technical designer and flier. He started his acting career on the stage in Berlin under the direction of Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater. In the early 1920s, he was a member of the Holtorf-Truppe, a stock theater group that included future director Veit Harlan. His fellow stage actors included his future wife, Erika Meingast, Marlene Dietrich, Dora Gerson and Max Schreck (the vampire in Nosferatu). Later he began working in silent and sound films; he landed supporting roles in Assassination, Queen Louise and Land Without Women. In 1930, along with Leni Riefenstahl, he appeared in Storm over Mont Blanc, and in 1932 he played the lead in Riefenstahl's The Blue Light.
He also had an international success with his appearance in The Eternal Mask. The movie was awarded with the American National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Film in the United States in 1937 (National Board of Review Awards 1937). The film was also nominated for an award at the Venice Film Festival. Also in 1937, Wieman was made Staatsschauspieler, an honorary title bestowed by the German government and the highest honour attainable by an actor in Germany.
1940s and after
Wieman was classed as "persona non grata"[1] by Joseph Goebbels, this greatly reduced his activity. He acted in the following movies in the 1940s: Ich klage an, Her Other Self, Paracelsus, Dreaming and How Do We Tell Our Children?. After the failed 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler happened in 1944, Mathias and his wife Erika helped the family of Count Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg. This assistance is detailed by Charlotte von der Schulenburg in the book Courageous Hearts: Women and the Anti-Hitler Plot of 1944
(Dorothee Von Meding, Berghahn Books, 1997).
In 1958, his hometown of Osnabrück awarded him the prestigious Justus-Möser-Medaille for his achievements in acting on stage and screen.
And in 1965, Wieman received the Bambi Award.