Michael Degen

Michael Degen was born in 1928 in Chemnitz

Degen was born in Chemnitz to Jewish parents, Jacob and Anna, and was the younger of two sons. In 1939 the Gestapo arrested his father and sent him to Sachsenhausen. He was released in 1940 and died soon after from the abuse he suffered there.

His older brother was sent to Denmark and reached the Land of Israel through Sweden. Michael and his mother hid in Berlin under false identities and survived in a hut in an allotment garden until the end of the war.

He first appeared on stage in 1946 and studied at the acting school of the Deutsches Theater on a scholarship. In 1949 he moved to Israel, served in the army, learned Hebrew, found his brother and acted in theaters in Tel Aviv.

Back in Germany he joined Brecht's Berliner Ensemble in 1954 and later worked in Cologne, Mannheim, Frankfurt and Berlin. He played Hamlet 300 times, worked with directors such as Ingmar Bergman and began acting in films in 1963. He also directed plays, and in 1999 he published a book about his childhood in the Nazi era.

He held Israeli and German citizenship and lived in Hamburg with his third wife. He died in Hamburg on 9 April 2022.