Eberhard Esche, born Ocotber 25, 1933, in Leipzig, attended actor's training from 1952 to 1955 at Leipzig's Theaterhochschule. After several shorter engagements at theatres in Erfurt, Meinigen, and Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz), he became a cast member at Deutsches Theater Berlin where he had a tenure until 1999 and was mainly seen in classic parts. Esche for instance played the part of Lancelot in the play "Der Drache" ("The Dragon") by Jewgenij Schwarz a total of 650 times. Besides his theatre performances, Esche also proved his artistic talent with recitations of Heine's "Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen" ("Germany. A Winter's Tale") and Goethe's "Reineke Fuchs", among others, and began to star in his first movie and TV roles.

Soon Esche became one of the most popular actors of the GDR, be it as a chemist in "Der geteilte Himmel" ("The Divided Heaven", 1963/1964), directed by Konrad Wolf, as the desperate scientist Uwe in Lothar Warneke's "Leben mit Uwe" ("Life with Uwe", 1973), or as party secretary Horrath in "Spur der Steine" ("The Trace of Stones", 1965/1966). But the film was banned in 1966 for his blatant criticism of the GDR's planned economy and was not shown until 1989. The part of the party secretary who is torn between party discipline and personal conviction was one of Esche's most outstanding performances.

In the following years, Esche again and again made a name with appearances in realistic and critically discursive DEFA films, for instance in "Die unverbesserliche Barbara" ("The Incorrigible Barbara", 1976) by Lothar Warneke. Furthermore, Esche expanded his repertoire with historical roles where he could act out his histrionic irony and his performative elegance, as he did in his part of the police officer Krolikowski in the Bobrowski adaptation "Levins Mühle" (1979/1980), directed by Horst Seemann.

In 2000, the actor published his film and theatre memoirs in the book "Der Hase im Rausch" and, in 2005, expanded these professional anecdotes with his autobiography "Wer sich grün macht, den fressen die Ziegen".

Eberhard Esche died on March 15, 2006, at the age of 72 in Berlin.

The contents of this entry were funded with the support of the DEFA-Stiftung.