Karl Helmerding

Karl Heinrich Helmerding (29 October 1822 – 20 December 1899) was a German folk actor and was considered the most popular comedian of all time in Berlin.

He also made successful studies in drawing under Johann Gottfried Schadow, and exercised his urge for the theatre on several small stages in his father's city.

[1] He made his debut as a professional actor in 1847 in Meissen and then worked for four years at the Hennig Bros. summer theatre in Berlin under director Carli Callenbach, who employed the beginner, who until then had played intriguer and character roles, in the comic field.

There is hardly an actor - perhaps only Friedrich Haase excepted - who has been imitated so much as our Berlin comedian, whose manner and nature dominated the German stage for a decade and a half.

[6] Helmerding actually made every part a brilliant role and preferred to portray the disillusioned, sceptical petty bourgeois of Berlin's suburbs, who had to climb the ladder to city life.