Gert Westphal

[2] After his reading of her husband's works, Katia Mann called him "des Dichters oberster Mund" (the poet's principal voice).

[4] Born in Dresden as the son of a culturally interested factory director,[1] Westphal attended the Realgymnasium in Blasewitz, graduating with the Abitur.

[5] He trained in acting with Paul Hoffmann at the Dresdner Staatsschauspielhaus, where he made his stage debut in 1940 in a minor role in Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen.

He commissioned new radio dramas and collaborated with Max Ophüls, Will Quadflieg, Hans Paetsch, Oskar Werner, Walter Jens and Joachim Fest.

[5] As a reciter and audiobook narrator, Westphal recorded major works by German authors, and also translations of writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Henry James and Thornton Wilder, with a focus on Russian literature by Chinghiz Aitmatov, Fjodor Dostojewski, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Goncharov, Maxim Gorki, Nikolai Leskov, Vladimir Nabokov, Leo Tolstoi and Anton Checkov, among others.