EUGEN KLOPFER

Eugen Klopfer was a German actor from the 1910s to the 1940s. After the Nazi seizure of power, he was promoted to the Presiding Board of the Reich Film Chamber under Joseph Goebbels. In 1934, he was designated as a Staatsschauspieler (an actor of national importance) and he was appointed the director of the Volksbuhne ("People's Theatre") in Berlin. In 1935 he was appointed Vice President of the Ministry of Arts and joined the board of UFA. In 1937, Klopfer joined the Nazi party and in 1940, he played the role of Landschaftskonsulenten Sturm in Veit Harlan's anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film Jud Suss. In August 1944, towards the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler added Klopfer to the Gottbegnadeten-Liste (a list of important German artists) which exempted him from military service, including service on the home front.

After 1945, Klopfer was banned and spent two months in prison in 1948. After a denazification trial, he was exonerated from the charge of complicity in the death of Joachim Gottschalk but his work with the Nazi party greatly harmed his post-war career and he died in 1950 at the age of 63.