Though many of his films became merely historical curiosities, G.W. Pabst (1885-1967) was one of Germany's leading early film directors. A master of silent realist cinema, Pabst explored various genres, and his post-World War I films show a marked concern with the evils of Nazism and anti-Semitism.

Background in Theater

Georg Wilhelm Pabst was born on August 27, 1885, in what was then Raudnice in Bohemia, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which dissolved following the defeat of Austria-Hungary in the First World War. Later spelled Roudnice, the city is now located in the Czech Republic. Pabst attended school in Vienna, where the family had moved when he was a child. He studied engineering until 1902, when he began studying at Vienna's Academy of Decorative Arts. In 1904 Pabst began working as an actor, and the following year he moved to Zürich, Switzerland. Over the next four years he...