Rudolf Platte

Rudolf Antonius Heinrich Platte (12 February 1904 – 18 December 1984) was a German actor. Born in Hörde, Westphalia (today part of Dortmund) the son of a merchant, his family moved to Hildesheim three years later. Rudolf left school at the age of 16 to take acting lessons, making his debut in 1925 as Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Düsseldorf. Two years later he moved to Berlin, where he together with Werner Finck and Hans Deppe founded the cabaret Die Katakombe.

From 1929 onward, Platte performed in more than 200 film roles, embodying the shy and underestimated, likeable "Little Man". In 1940 he succeeded Ralph Arthur Roberts as director of the Theater in der Behrenstraße in Berlin (right beside the present-day Komische Oper) until its final closure in 1944. From 1945 to 1947 he directed the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, which in 1954 became home of the Berliner Ensemble theatre company.

After World War II, Platte could continue his film career in West Germany, performing in numerous comedies as well as in literary film adaptions, later also on television, and still successfully appeared on stage in Berlin.

In 1942 he had married the actress Georgia Lind (his second wife). The couple divorced shortly afterwards, but remarried in 1954. In the intervening year he was married to another actress Marina Ried. Both are buried in an ehrengrab in the Berlin Wilmersdorf cemetery.