Born Paul Paege on January 21, 1882, in Halle (Saale), Paul Paulsen began his stage career in 1900 at the Meiningen Hoftheater. After engagements in Naumburg, Rudolstadt, and Freiberg, he joined the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1908. In 1913 he moved to the Dresden Hoftheater, where he soon became a popular character actor, appearing in works such as Gerhart Hauptmann’s Hamlet adaptation and Rose Bernd, as well as in Fritz von Unruh’s Bonaparte, and Hans Christoph Kaergel’s Andreas Hollmann, and Hanns Johst’s Schlageter. In addition to his artistic work, he was also active as a trade unionist and in 1919 was named head of the stage workers’ guild in Saxony.
In 1908, Paulsen—who at this time was still going by his given name, Paege—married the actress Rosalie Johanna Heimann, who was born into a Jewish family in Bonn on March 7, 1885. As a result, he was forced in 1933 to relinquish his posts to the regional head of the stage workers’ guild, Alexis Posse, only to be reinstated the following year. After intensified anti-Jewish persecution under the “racial laws” of 1935, Paulsen was expelled from the Nazi Reich Theater Chamber because of his Jewish family ties. Since membership in the organization was a requirement for all professional actors, Paulsen was effectively barred from his profession from that point on. However, the theater management succeeded in obtaining a special permit for him from the Propaganda Ministry, which could be revoked at any time. This allowed him to remain a member of the ensemble until the end of the Nazi period.
After the war, Paulsen continued working at the Dresden theater, serving from 1945 to 1947 as deputy general director and administrative director, and then again as an actor until his retirement. He also appeared in DEFA films in the 1950s, including Kurt Maetzig’s propagandistic Thälmann biopic and in Martin Hellberg’s historical film Thomas Müntzer. Paul Paulsen died on June 29, 1963, in Dresden. His wife also survived the war and Nazi persecution. She died on May 24, 1947, in Bad Gottleuba, near Dresden.
1882 Halle (Saale)
1963 Dresden