Werner Finck

Born in Görlitz in Prussian Silesia, the son of a pharmacist, Finck attended an art school in Dresden and began his career as an itinerant storyteller of fairy tales in the 1920s.

Finck acted as conferencier, and the cabaret became successful because of his critical and subtly impudent remarks against the Nazis, proving to be an early thorn in their side.

His exploits made him a legend in his lifetime, to such an extent that when he introduced himself to British and American journalists after the war, he was met with disbelief as they believed that the "Werner Finck" who joked against the Nazis was a fairy-tale figure.

It was due to the intervention of his friend, actress Käthe Dorsch, who talked to Goebbels' rival Hermann Göring, that Finck was released on 1 July on condition that he not work in public for a year.

However, he was banned from the Reichskulturkammer in 1939 and, threatened with arrest again, he joined the Wehrmacht armed forces in the rank of a private radiotelephone operator to avoid imprisonment.

From 1945-49, Finck, with Hans Bayer ("Thaddäus Troll"), issued the journal Das Wespennest ("The Hornets' Nest"), the first German satirical magazine after the war.

Finck was able to continue his film career, including the role for which he is most known today, in Fassbinder's TV series Eight Hours Don't Make a Day in 1972; he played Gregor, the doddering but gentle old lover of the miniseries protagonist's grandmother.