Kurt Raab

Kurt Raab was a West German stage and film actor, as well as a screenwriter and playwright. Raab is best remembered for his work with German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with whom he collaborated on 31 film projects.

Biography

Raab was born in Bergreichenstein, which is now Kašperské Hory, Czech Republic. He completed the abitur at Musische Gymnasium Straubing, and studied in Munich.
He made his cinema debut in Fassbinder's Liebe ist kälter als der Tod in 1969. Over the next few years, he made numerous films with Fassbinder, including Warum läuft Herr R. Amok? and Der Amerikanische Soldat in 1970, Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte in 1971, and Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten in 1972.
He also worked as a production designer, assistant director, producer, and a screenwriter.
On 28 June 1988, at age 46, Raab died of AIDS-related complications. Before Raab died, he worked to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in West Germany. In 1987, he discussed his illness in Herbert Achternbusch's Wohin?, a film about AIDS hysteria. In 1988, he made Mitten im Leben, a documentary about AIDS, for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen.
However, the illness remained poorly understood and Raab was placed in quarantine-like conditions in the Hamburg Tropical Institute. While confined to a hospital bed, Raab and his friend Hans Hirschmüller compiled the documentary Sehnsucht Nach Sodom, in which they explored "subjects as taboo as AIDS, death and the Catholicism of a gay person." Sehnsucht was released posthumously in 1989.
Prejudice about AIDS was also evident when Raab's body was refused burial in Steinbeißen, the Lower Bavarian town in which his family had settled in 1945. He is buried in Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg.