Actor. He joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919 and had to flee after the Nazi takeover. The Soviet Union expelled him in 1938 and he moved to Prague,  where he was arrested in 1939. He survived the Concentration Camps of Sachsenhausen, Dachau and Neuengamme and the RAF sinking of the ship “Cap Arcona”. After the war Geschonneck acted in theaters in Hamburg and from 1949 was a member of Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble.  He appeared in over 70 movies and TV series including “Jakob der Lügner” (“Jacob the Liar”),  the only East German production that was nominated for an Oscar, as well as the Frank Beyer movies “Fünf Patronenhülsen” (“Five Cartridges”), “Nackt unter Wölfen” (“Naked Among Wolves”), “Karbid und Sauerampfer” (“Carbide and Sorrel”), and frightened generations of children in the film version of Wilhelm Hauffs “Das kalte Herz” (“The Cold Heart”, 1950), where he played the giant Hollaender-Michel. His popularity as an actor enabled him to criticize the social situation in East Germany up to its dissolution in 1990,  though he remained a Communist until his death at the age of 101. (bio by: Lutetia)