Conrad Wiene was born in Vienna, younger son of the successful actor Carl Wiene, in whose footsteps Conrad initially followed as a stage and screen actor. He co-directed his first films with his elder brother Robert, and later made almost twenty feature films, mostly silent. For most of them he also wrote the screenplays.
He worked in Berlin, Prague and Breslau (Wrocław) and above all in Vienna, where several of his silent films were shot in the Schönbrunn Studios (Schönbrunn-Ateliers).
His name was connected with the first proposal in 1930 in Vienna to film Lion Feuchtwanger's 1925 historical novelJud Süß ("Jew Süss"), but the project never reached the production stage.[1]
With the arrival and dominance of sound film, Wiene worked in Germany. After Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, Wiene, who was Jewish,[2] left Berlin for Vienna. He left Vienna in May 1934 and his subsequent fate is unknown.
^The novel was later filmed in England, in 1934, and again in 1940 in Nazi Germany, by Veit Harlan. While the British film, Jew Suss, can be seen today as sympathetic towards Jews and indirectly critical of National Socialist policy towards the Jews, the later German adaptation Jud Süß was an infamous anti-semitic film on permanent release during World War II in all occupied countries.
