---
name: "Albert Bassermann"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/albert-bassermann"
fi1m_id: "albert-bassermann"
imdb_id: "nm0060168"
tmdb_id: 29137
wikidata_id: "Q64150"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "6 September 1867"
died: "15 May 1952"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 4
average_fi1m_score: 76
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 4
updated: "2026-09-20T01:08:28.628852+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Albert Bassermann

## Identity

Albert Bassermann

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/albert-bassermann
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** albert-bassermann
- **IMDb ID:** nm0060168
- **TMDB ID:** 29137
- **Wikidata ID:** Q64150
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bassermann, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64150, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0060168/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/29137

Actor. Born 6 September 1867 in Mannheim, Germany. Died 15 May 1952.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 6 September 1867, Mannheim, Germany
- **Died:** 15 May 1952
- **Active:** 1940–1948
- **Also known as:** Albert Basserman
- **Academy Awards:** 1 Oscar nomination
- **Average Fi1m score:** 76, as actor, over 4 titles
- **Score spread:** 1 at 80+, 3 at 60–79, 0 under 60
- **Lead roles:** 0 of 4 acting credits billed first or second
- **Genres:** Drama 3, Romance 2, Action 1, History 1, Mystery 1, Thriller 1
- **Screen time:** 9 hours of reviewed films
- **Box office:** $10m across 1 films with figures
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bassermann, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64150, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0060168/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/29137

## Streaming the US now

- **HBO Max:** [*The Red Shoes*](https://film.one/film/the-red-shoes.md) (92)
- **Hulu:** [*Foreign Correspondent*](https://film.one/film/foreign-correspondent.md) (76)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Albert Bassermann

> A pillar of the German stage who reached Hollywood in his seventies with almost no English, Albert Bassermann played grave, gentle old Europeans, and made the care of a man speaking a learned language look like wisdom. Hitchcock used it better than anyone.

Watch him early in *Foreign Correspondent* (1940). Van Meer, the Dutch diplomat everyone in the film wants to get hold of, meets Joel McCrea's reporter and answers his plain questions with a courtesy so mild it barely registers as a performance. Bassermann gives him no grandeur at all: an old man who is used to being talked past and has decided not to mind. We found his later scenes hard to sit through, and it is entirely because of how harmless he has been in the first ones; what is done to him we will not describe, but the film's cruelty lands on the softest thing in it. Hitchcock knew exactly what he had.

He had been acting for more than fifty years by then. He began on the Mannheim stage in 1887, having studied chemistry, worked under Otto Brahm in Berlin from 1899 and Max Reinhardt from 1909 to 1915, and was known above all as an Ibsen actor whose characterisations were detailed, individual and often against the grain of how a part was supposed to be done. He was one of the first German stage actors of his standing to go before a camera, in *Der Andere* (1913), when that was still thought beneath a serious player. He left Germany in 1933 for Switzerland, reached America at the end of the decade, and learned his lines phonetically with his wife Elsa's help.

Hollywood knew what to do with a face like that and did it repeatedly. Consul Magnus Barring in *A Woman's Face* (1941), Professor Jean Perot in *Madame Curie* (1943): consuls, professors, statesmen, the wise old European standing a step behind the leads. The accent and the phonetic delivery kept him there, and nobody was going to hand a lead to a man in his seventies working in a second language. What survives on screen is a way of speaking. Each word is set down separately, as if it had been carried some distance, and in a small part that reads as gravity. He said once that his aim had been to make people out of parts. The Hollywood parts were small, so the people had to be made fast, and he made them.

His last film was *The Red Shoes* (1948), as Sergei Ratov, the company's stage designer. Our review does not mention him, and that is fair: he is one of the faces around Lermontov's table, part of the company rather than a figure in it, which is what the film needs from him. See *Foreign Correspondent* for the performance. See *The Red Shoes* for the film, and if you know to look, you will find him there, listening.

## Biography

Albert Bassermann (also credited as Albert Basserman) was a German stage and screen actor. Born in Mannheim, he began his career in 1887 and became one of the leading German-speaking actors of his generation, receiving the Iffland-Ring. He specialised in Shakespearean roles and the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and made his screen debut in the 1913 silent film Der Andere.

Bassermann appeared in numerous German films during the 1920s. With his wife, actress Elsa Schiff, he emigrated to the United States in 1939. He continued working in Hollywood as a character actor, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Foreign Correspondent (1940). His final film role was as Sergei Ratov in The Red Shoes (1948). He died in 1952 while travelling to Zürich.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (4)

- *The Red Shoes* (1948), Fi1m 92, as Sergei Ratov — [page](https://film.one/film/the-red-shoes.md)
- *Since You Went Away* (1944), Fi1m 63, as Sigmund Golden — [page](https://film.one/film/since-you-went-away.md)
- *Madame Curie* (1943), Fi1m 72, as Professor Jean Perot — [page](https://film.one/film/madame-curie.md)
- *Foreign Correspondent* (1940), Fi1m 76, as Van Meer — [page](https://film.one/film/foreign-correspondent.md)

## Complete filmography (59)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *The Red Shoes* (1948), as Sergei Ratov — Fi1m 92, [page](https://film.one/film/the-red-shoes.md)
- *Escape Me Never* (1947), as Professor Heinrich
- *The Private Affairs of Bel Ami* (1947), as Jacques Rival
- *The Searching Wind* (1946), as Count von Stammer
- *Strange Holiday* (1945), as School Principal
- *Rhapsody in Blue* (1945), as Prof. Franck
- *Since You Went Away* (1944), as Sigmund Golden — Fi1m 63, [page](https://film.one/film/since-you-went-away.md)
- *Madame Curie* (1943), as Professor Jean Perot — Fi1m 72, [page](https://film.one/film/madame-curie.md)
- *Good Luck, Mr. Yates* (1943), as Dr. Carl Hesser
- *Reunion in France* (1942), as General Hugo Schroeder
- *Once Upon a Honeymoon* (1942), as General Borelski
- *The Moon and Sixpence* (1942), as Dr. Coutras
- *Desperate Journey* (1942), as Dr. Ludwig Mather
- *Invisible Agent* (1942), as Arnold Schmidt
- *Fly By Night* (1942), as Dr. Storm
- *The Shanghai Gesture* (1941), as Van Elst
- *New Wine* (1941), as Ludwig van Beethoven
- *A Woman's Face* (1941), as Consul Magnus Barring
- *I Was a Criminal* (1941), as Wilhelm Voight, a Shoemaker
- *Escape* (1940), as Dr. Arthur Henning
- *A Dispatch from Reuters* (1940), as Franz Geller
- *Knute Rockne All American* (1940), as Father Julius Nieuwland
- *Foreign Correspondent* (1940), as Van Meer — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/film/foreign-correspondent.md)
- *Moon Over Burma* (1940), as Basil Renner
- *Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet* (1940), as Dr. Robert Koch
- *Heroes of the Marne* (1938), as Col. von Gelow
- *Last Love* (1935), as Thomas Bruck
- *A Certain Mr. Gran* (1933), as Tschernikoff
- *Cadets* (1931), as General von Seddin
- *Inquest* (1931), as Dr. Konrad Bienert, Landgerichtsrat
- *1914: The Last Days Before the War* (1931), as Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
- *Dreyfus* (1930), as Oberst Picquart
- *Alraune* (1930), as Professor ten Brinken
- *Napoleon at St. Helena* (1929), as Hudson Lowe - Gouverneur von St. Helena
- *Fräulein Else* (1929), as Dr. Alfred Thalhof
- *Wenn das Herz der Jugend spricht* (1926), as Professor Imhof
- *Helen of Troy* (1924), as Aisakos
- *The Student Prince* (1923), Actor
- *Earth Spirit* (1923), as Dr. Schön
- *The Man in the Iron Mask* (1923), Actor
- *Lucrezia Borgia* (1922), as Papst Alexander VI Rodrigo Borgia
- *The Loves of Pharaoh* (1922), as Sothis
- *Frauenopfer* (1922), as Graf
- *Die kleine Dagmar* (1921), Actor
- *Die Söhne des Grafen Dossy* (1920), Actor
- *Die Stimme* (1920), Actor
- *Dolls of Death* (1920), as Graf Robert
- *Die Duplizität der Ereignisse* (1920), Actor
- *Der letzte Zeuge* (1919), Actor
- *Lorenzo Burghardt* (1918), Actor
- *Dr. Schotte* (1918), as Dr. Schotte
- *Die Brüder von Zaarden* (1918), Actor
- *Vater und Sohn* (1918), Actor
- *Der eiserne Wille* (1917), Actor
- *Du sollst keine anderen Götter haben* (1917), Actor
- *Herr und Diener* (1917), Actor
- *Urteil des Arztes* (1914), Actor
- *Der letzte Tag* (1913), as Prof. Osterode
- *Der Andere* (1913), as Dr. Hallers

## Gallery

- ![Die letzten Urlaubstage: Albert Bassermann mit Frau und Tochter in einem süddeutschen Ferienort. (1929)](https://film.one/media/person/59029/gallery-2a73aa7827ce.jpg) Die letzten Urlaubstage: Albert Bassermann mit Frau und Tochter in einem süddeutschen Ferienort. (1929) — Eduard Wasow, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Eduard_Wasow_Albert_Bassermann_mit_Frau_und_Tochter_1929.jpg/1280px-Eduard_Wasow_Albert_Bassermann_mit_Frau_und_Tochter_1929.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Berlin memorial plaque, Eugen Albert Bassermann, Joachim-Friedrich-Straße 54, Berlin-Halensee, Germany (2007)](https://film.one/media/person/59029/gallery-50ba360c41fd.jpg) Berlin memorial plaque, Eugen Albert Bassermann, Joachim-Friedrich-Straße 54, Berlin-Halensee, Germany (2007) — OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Gedenktafel_Joachim-Friedrich-Str_54_%28Halsee%29_Eugen_Albert_Bassermann.jpg/1280px-Gedenktafel_Joachim-Friedrich-Str_54_%28Halsee%29_Eugen_Albert_Bassermann.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 0 won, 1 nominated

- 1941: Best Supporting Actor (nominated), for *Foreign Correspondent*

### Other awards — 1 won

- Schiller Plaque of the City of Mannheim 1949: Schiller Plaque of the City of Mannheim (won)

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/albert-bassermann