Martin Kosleck; Actor Recognized for Nazi Roles

Martin Kosleck, the German-born film character actor who portrayed dozens of Nazis everyone loved to hate, but who said he never had the questionable honor of meeting one, is dead.

Christopher Drake, a longtime friend, said Kosleck, known for his icy demeanor and wicked eyes, was 89 when he died Jan. 16 in a Santa Monica convalescent home. He had undergone abdominal surgery a week earlier.

For years before and after World War II, Kosleck epitomized the Nazi menace for millions of American moviegoers. He played SS troopers, concentration camp officers and mean-spirited German soldiers, all consumed with blind obedience to Adolf Hitler.

He portrayed Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, five times.

Kosleck was born in Barkotzen, Pomerania, now Germany. His German-Russian family traced its heritage to the 13th Century. He was 10 when he left his small village to study acting with Max Reinhardt in Berlin. He later went to Hollywood where he perfected his English and dined with such old Berlin friends as Marlene Dietrich.

He also was an accomplished portrait artist and managed to support himself with his art while waiting for a break in movies. According to author Richard Lamparski, in one of his “Whatever Became of. . . ?” anthologies, Kosleck was finally discovered not in films but on the New York stage, where director Anatole Litvak saw him in “The Merchant of Venice” and cast him in a film that foretold things to come for his career: “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” in 1939. It was his first link with Goebbels.

For the next decade he was the evil spy, double agent or Gestapo despot in “Underground,” “All Through the Night,” “Chetniks,” “Berlin Correspondent,” “The Hitler Gang” and other films. His piercing stare made him a natural for other psychopaths in “The Mad Doctor,” “She Wolf of London” and “The Frozen Ghost.”

During an interview with Lamparski, Kosleck said he had never met Goebbels. In fact, he said, “I’ve never spoken with a Nazi in my life. . . . The fools were all over the streets of Berlin when I left in 1931. No one I knew took them seriously.”

His last performance was a small part in “The Man With Bogart’s Face” in 1980.

He was married to the actress Eleonora von Mendelssohn, who died several years ago. There are no immediate survivors, Drake said.