Heinrich Schweiger

Heinrich Schweiger (23 July 1931 – 14 July 2009) was an Austrian film and stage actor who played leading roles at the Burgtheater on the Ring beginning in 1949. Among the plays in which he starred were Schiller's Don Carlos, Shakespeare's Othello and Richard III and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera.

The actor's last roles were in Wallenstein, Franz Lehár's Das Land des Lächelns and in an ORF TV series. After studying at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, Schweiger debuted at the Burgtheater at the age of 18. His breakthrough role came at the age of 22 in Arthur Schnitzler's Komtesse Mizzi.

He had roles in the 1960s at the Freien Volksbühne in Berlin under Erwin Piscator and the city's Theater am Kurfürstendamm under Leonard Steckel. In the 1970s he played at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg under Boy Gobert.Schweiger also took on the roles of the devil and mammon for 12 years in Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival and had guest roles at the Akademietheater and the Perchtoldsdorf Summer Festival.

The actor also had roles in the TV series Kommisar Rex and Ringstraßenpalais, in the films Franz Schubert – ein Leben in zwei Sätzen and Der Bockerer, and worked with the Austrian filmmaker Franz Antel.

Schweiger successfully portrayed a variety of characters with leading roles in world literature and at the same time been at home in Vienna coffee-house literature.Schweiger married former MEP and current Vienna first district leader Ursula Stenzel in 1983. It was his third marriage. He died after suffering circulatory failure and a cerebral haemorrhage.

An amateur photographer, Schweiger released the photobook Images of an Actor, which was a collection of photographs started in 1983.