Bruno Kastner

Biography

Born on the frost-lipped morning of 3 January 1890 in the Brandenburg textile town of Forst, Bruno Kastner grew up amid the hiss of steam looms and the smell of fresh dye, yet his own colours would be projected on silver screens, not woven into cotton. By his late twenties he had slipped into cinema’s young century, scripting and starring in the fever-dream romance Das Herz des Casanova (1919) and the culture-clash melodrama Zwischen zwei Welten (1919), performances that lit darkened theatres like sudden magnesium flares. Nine years later he stepped into the steel-rimmed boots of the Reformer, headlining the epic Luther (1928) and cementing his reputation as an actor who could make history breathe. Off-camera he shared his life—and its lines of dialogue—with actress Ida Wüst, a partnership written in equal parts passion and playbills. On 30 June 1932, in the vineyard-ringed spa town of Bad Kreuznach, the final curtain fell; Kastner exited at forty-two, leaving the projectors still humming his name.