Karl Grune

Who was Karl Grune?

Karl Grune was an Austrian film director and writer who made many silent films in the 1920s.

Grune was born in Vienna, where he later attended drama school. He volunteered in the First World War, where an injury temporarily deprived him of the ability to speak in 1918.

After the war he made his directing debut in 1919 with Menschen in Ketten. In 1923 he made Schlagende Wetter with Liane Haid and Eugen Klöpfer in the leading roles. The film is a notable early example of naturalism in film making, at a time when expressionism was the norm. Also that year he made Die Straße, which considered Grune's most notable film. In 1926 he made Die Brüder Schellenberg with Conrad Veidt and Lil Dagover. Many of his early films are now lost.

He emigrated to England in 1933 and there made Abdul, the Damned with Fritz Kortner in 1935, and in 1936 he filmed Ruggiero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci with Richard Tauber.

In his later career he turned to producing films in the 1940s. He died in Bournemouth, England in 1962.