The actor Norbert Schiller was born on November 24, 1899, in Vienna. After completing his acting training there at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts, he made his debut at the Burgtheater and went to the Lübeck Stadttheater in 1921. From 1922 to 1928, he was engaged at the Frankfurt Schauspielhaus before moving to Berlin, where he performed at the Renaissance Theater until 1931 and also appeared as a guest at the State Theater. In 1932, he came to Darmstadt as an actor and director.
Expelled from there in 1933 because he was Jewish, Schiller fled to Bern in 1933 and worked as a director at the local theater. During the 1935/36 and 1937/38 seasons, he worked at the Städtebundtheater of Biel and Solothurn.
Schiller left Europe for the United States on January 19, 1939, aboard the SS Manhattan, departing from Le Havre and reaching New York on January 26. There, he joined the short-lived acting ensemble “The Continental Players”, founded the previous year in New York by Max Reinhardt and Wilhelm Dieterle. The ensemble sought to provide an artistic home for German-speaking actors who had fled the Nazis. Norbert Schiller participated in its 1939 production of Friedrich Schiller’s William Tell, directed by Leopold Jessner and performed in various cities across the United States, alongside Ernst Deutsch as well as Eva Heymann, who had fled the Stuttgart Landestheater. He began establishing himself in Hollywood in 1947, appearing in numerous films, mostly in supporting roles. In 1973, Maximilian Schell cast him in a supporting role in his film The Pedestrian, in which Schiller portrayed a German actor in American exile. Two further films—End of the Game and Tales from the Vienna Woods—followed in 1975 and 1979. Norbert Schiller died on January 8, 1988, in Santa Barbara, California.
1899 Vienna
1988 Santa Barbara, California