Ernst Matray

Biography

Budapest, 27 May 1891: a restless boy slips into the city’s swirling theatres and, almost overnight, turns into Ernst Matray—juggler of words, collector of shadows. By 1915 he is already sprinting through the flicker of early German cinema, juggling three films in a single breath: Teufelchen, Die wilde Blume, and the following year’s Schloss Phantom, each one a lantern he carries into the dark of a continent at war. Love arrives in chapters: first Elisabeth McKinley, then Maria Matray, then Greta Schröder—three marriages, three different lenses through which he studies the same human puzzle. The Old World finally loosens its grip; he crosses the Atlantic and settles in Los Angeles, where palm-lined boulevards replace cobblestones and sunset becomes a daily curtain call. There, on 12 November 1978, the final reel turns quiet: Ernst Matray exits the frame, leaving the light to keep dancing without him.