Gert Westphal


Curt Gerhard Westphal, stage name Gert Westphal, was a German actor, one of the best-known audiobook narrators and speakers in German, described as "König der Vorleser" and "der Caruso der Vorleser". After his reading of her husband's works, Katia Mann called him "des Dichters oberster Mund". The literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki said he was probably the best reciter of German.

Career

Born in Dresden as the son of a culturally interested factory director, Westphal attended the Realgymnasium in Blasewitz, graduating with the Abitur. He trained in acting with Paul Hoffmann at the Dresdner Staatsschauspielhaus, where he made his stage debut in 1940 in a minor role in Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen. He was then drafted for military service and later became a prisoner of war. In 1946 he moved to Bremen, where he was both a member of the and an announcer for Radio Bremen. Starting in 1948, he headed that broadcaster's radio drama division. In 1953, he took the same position with Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden where he remained until 1959. He was in contact with authors such as Alfred Andersch, Ingeborg Bachmann, Gottfried Benn, Max Frisch and Carl Zuckmayer. He commissioned new radio dramas and collaborated with Max Ophüls, Will Quadflieg, Hans Paetsch, Oskar Werner, Walter Jens and Joachim Fest.
As a reciter and audiobook narrator, Westphal recorded major works by German authors, and also translations of writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Henry James and Thornton Wilder, with a focus on Russian literature by Chinghiz Aitmatov, Fjodor Dostojewski, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Goncharov, Maxim Gorki, Nikolai Leskov, Vladimir Nabokov, Leo Tolstoi and Anton Checkov, among others. In 1994, he performed along with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in a series of readings of correspondence, such as between Hofmannsthal and Strauss, and between Zelter and Goethe.
He died in Zürich and was buried in Kilchberg, next to the family grave of Thomas Mann.

Awards