The Full Biography
Maximilian Schell. Actor. Director. The Viennese child who fled the Anschluss and then won an American Oscar defending German judges in an American courtroom.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a young counsel on his feet in a Nuremberg courtroom, English perfect, argument relentless, asking a room of victors to look at what a whole country had done. The year was 1961. The picture was Judgment at Nuremberg. What the still cannot show is a Swiss boy from a theatrical house, a sister who was already the star, and a man who would spend the next fifty years refusing to become Hollywood’s rented German.
He was born Maximilian Schell on December 8, 1930, in Vienna, to Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a Swiss poet, playwright, and pharmacy owner, and Margarethe Noé von Nordberg, an actress who ran an acting school. The household was Catholic, literate, and already a company. Maria, the elder sister, would be first into the lights. Carl and Immy would act as well. Maximilian was three when he first walked onto a Vienna stage. He took the theatre, he said years afterward, the way other children remember a mother’s cooking.
In 1938 the Anschluss arrived. The family left Hitler’s Vienna for Zurich. That is the first pressure. A boy who had been Viennese became Swiss, and Swiss he remained: citizenship, army year, a European life he would never trade for a Hollywood zip code. In Zurich he read the classics and, at ten, wrote a play. He wanted, at first, to paint, to write, to make music — his father’s trades, not his mother’s. He studied at the University of Zurich, kicked a football, rowed, and wrote for newspapers. After the war he took philosophy and art history in Munich, hid in a family hunting cabin to draft a novel he never showed anyone, served in the Swiss Army, and sat a year in a London sixth form. Then he decided. Scientist or artist. Degree or chaos. He chose the chaos and the Basel Theatre.
The door was German film in 1955: Kinder, Mütter und ein General, a young deserter already sick of a lost war. Seven more European pictures followed. In 1958 America invited him for Ira Levin’s Broadway play Interlock, as an aspiring pianist, and for Edward Dmytryk’s The Young Lions, as a German officer beside Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. He was not yet a name. He was the intelligent face the anti-war pictures needed.
In 1959 CBS’s Playhouse 90 staged a live Judgment at Nuremberg. Schell played Hans Rolfe, counsel for judges who had served the Reich. The performance was good enough that Stanley Kramer kept him, and Werner Klemperer, when the story went to film. Kramer assembled Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift. Schell prepared by reading the forty-volume record of the actual trials. On screen he does not ask the audience to love Rolfe. He asks them to hear the defense of the indefensible all the way to the end. In 1962 Joan Crawford handed him the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was thirty-one. Maria wrote him a letter of pride. The sister who had been the star had just watched the younger brother take the largest American prize a German-speaking actor had won since the war.
Hollywood wanted the accent and the moral weather. He gave it, on his terms, and then left the lot. He played Hamlet on German television and on the stage, more than once; people who keep a list of Hamlets still put him near the top. He would not stay in Los Angeles to collect the next Nuremberg. Zurich remained a home. Vienna remained a home. The Swiss army year stayed in the file as citizenship, not as costume. He went home to write, produce, and direct, and to keep a piano that was not a prop. Recitals with men such as Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado were not publicity. They were the other desk. The Deutsches Filminstitut would call him a universal artist. The phrase is publicity. The recitals were not. He took the American parts that still had a sentence, and he took the European pictures that let him hold the camera.
That is the turn, and it is easy to miss because the public remembers the summation, not the man who walked away from the studio that wanted only the summation. Five Finger Exercise (1962) and Vittorio De Sica’s The Condemned of Altona (1962), from Sartre, used the Oscar as a door, not a chair. Topkapi (1964), Jules Dassin’s Istanbul jewel caper, let him be charming instead of counsel. Return from the Ashes (1965). Sidney Lumet’s The Deadly Affair (1967), from le Carré, put him in London fog. Counterpoint (1968) made him a German officer with an orchestra as a hostage. Krakatoa, East of Java (1969) is a disaster picture that hired the accent. He would not stay in Los Angeles to collect the next Nuremberg. He went home to write, produce, and direct.
First Love (1970), from Turgenev, earned a foreign-language Oscar nomination. Pope Joan (1972) was a costume he could have refused and did not. The Pedestrian (1973), which he directed, put a German industrialist under the weight of a Nazi past and earned another foreign-language nomination. The Odessa File (1974) put him opposite Jon Voight in a thriller about men who had not finished 1945. The Man in the Glass Booth (1975), from Robert Shaw, brought a second Best Actor nomination: a man who might be a Holocaust survivor or a Nazi, hidden in so many identities that the glass is the point. St. Ives (1976) was a Charles Bronson picture that needed a European face. Julia (1977), for Fred Zinnemann, brought a supporting nomination as an anti-Nazi courier. The same year he was a German general in Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far and stood in Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. Disney’s The Black Hole (1979) put him in an American spaceship as if the old Hollywood door had never closed. The Chosen (1981), from Chaim Potok, gave him a Brooklyn rabbi. The American industry kept hiring the face. The European one kept getting the director. He played Hamlet on German television and on the stage, more than once. People who keep a list of Hamlets still put him near the top.
The American parts after Nuremberg were a visiting list, not a residence. Istanbul, London, a disaster volcano, a Disney spaceship, a Brooklyn rabbi, a New York joke with Brando. The European parts were the desk: Turgenev, the industrialist, the man in the glass, the courier in Julia, Hamlet again. He read the forty-volume trial record before he spoke Rolfe’s first line. He directed as seriously as he acted. Zurich kept the passport. Preitenegg kept the piano. Hollywood kept the still of the summation and did not get the rest of the man.
Six things most people never knew
- Maria was the first Schell the public owned. Maximilian’s Oscar did not invent the family. It rearranged the billing.
- He originated Hans Rolfe on live television, not in Kramer’s film. Playhouse 90, 1959. The movie kept two actors from that broadcast. He was one.
- He read the Nuremberg trial record before he spoke a line. Forty volumes. The eloquence was homework, not a gift from wardrobe.
- He directed as seriously as he acted. The Pedestrian and First Love were not vanity. They were the career he wanted after the statue.
- He was a pianist who could share a stage with Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado. The Deutsches Filminstitut called him a universal artist. The phrase is publicity. The recitals were not.
- Marlene is a portrait without the face. Dietrich sat in a Paris apartment and refused the camera. Schell kept the tape and made the refusal the picture.
He married the Russian actress Natalya Andreychenko in 1985. Their daughter, Nastassja, was born in 1989. The marriage ended in 2005. In 2013 he married the opera singer Iva Mihanović. Friends from the European sets describe a professional who arrived with the score in his head — film score, piano score, the argument of a scene — and did not require a studio to tell him who he was.
He played Otto Frank on television in 1980. He played Peter the Great, Frederick the Great, a supporting turn in HBO’s Stalin that brought a Golden Globe. In 1998 Deep Impact put him in an American disaster picture as if the old Hollywood door had never closed. It had closed. He was visiting.
The later years
In 1984 he made Marlene, the documentary that is still the best argument for him as a director. Marlene Dietrich, old in Paris, would talk and would not be photographed. Schell built a film out of a voice, a closed door, and his own exasperated charm. It was nominated for an Oscar. He played Peter the Great on television in 1986, Frederick the Great, Otto Frank in 1980, a supporting turn in HBO’s Stalin (1992) that brought a Golden Globe. Andrew Bergman’s The Freshman (1990) put him opposite Marlon Brando in a New York joke. A Far Off Place (1993). James Gray’s Little Odessa (1994). In 1998 Deep Impact put him in an American disaster picture as a visiting elder. CBS’s Joan of Arc (1999) used the same face. He was not collecting a Hollywood pension. He was taking the work that still had a sentence in it, and some that only had a paycheck, and going home to the piano.
Home was Swiss and Austrian: Zurich, Vienna, a farm at Preitenegg in Carinthia, the keyboard he had never treated as a hobby. He married the Russian actress Natalya Andreychenko in 1985. Their daughter, Nastassja, was born in 1989. The marriage ended in 2005. Hollywood had cooled, which was a relief more than a wound. In 2002 he made My Sister Maria, a family document about the actress who had been famous first and was, by then, ill. They took Bambi Awards together when the film was done. Maria died in 2005. He had already done the harder thing: filmed her while she was still here. In 2013 he married the German-Croatian opera singer Iva Mihanović. Friends from the European sets describe a professional who arrived with the score in his head — film score, piano score, the argument of a scene — and did not require a studio to tell him who he was.
The Preitenegg farm was not a postcard. It was the place he kept when the American lot wanted only the summation. He played the piano there. He read. He took the German-language work that Hollywood would not have known how to cast. Festivals asked him to stand up and remember Nuremberg; he could do that without becoming the memory. Festival in Cannes (2001) put him in a picture about the business of pictures. He was visiting. The Swiss passport stayed in the pocket. The Austrian farm stayed in the file. Iva sang. Nastassja grew up between languages, which was the household he knew how to keep. Zurich and Vienna remained the cities he would not trade for a Hollywood zip code. Innsbruck, at the end, was a hospital, not a home. The Alps were the last weather. The summation was the first still. Both are true. Only one is the life.
He worked in German and in English until the body stopped. Les Brigands, a European picture, was still in postproduction when he died. He died in Innsbruck on February 1, 2014, of complications from pneumonia. He was eighty-three. Iva and Nastassja survived him. The obituaries led with Nuremberg, which was correct as a title and small as a life. The farm, the closed door in Paris, the sister on film, and a Swiss passport he would not trade: those are the last chapter. He had not become Hollywood’s rented German. He had become a European artist the American stills were allowed to touch.
After he was gone
Nastassja remains. The Kramer film still plays in classrooms that think they are watching a history lesson and are, for a stretch, watching a defense attorney win an argument he must lose. Marlene still teaches a documentarian what to do when the subject will not sit. Hamlet, for those who saw him, remains a rumor of a performance the American stills cannot hold.
He did not have the loudest Hollywood career of his generation. He had one of the more complete European ones that Hollywood was allowed to touch.
He came out of Vienna and a Zurich exile, took a German deserter as a first part, walked into Kramer’s courtroom, won the statue, refused to become the statue, directed the pictures about guilt, played the man in the glass, sat with Dietrich until she would only be a voice, filmed his sister, and died in the Alps a Swiss citizen. The still of the summation will last. It should. The life behind it was a flight, a sister, a refusal, and a piano.
If you only remember Nuremberg, you have the photograph. If you remember the Anschluss train, the Basel stage, The Pedestrian, and the closed door in Paris, you have him.
Portrait: Unknown photographer · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons