Max Haufler

Max Haufler (1910-1965), who was not only one of the most famous Swiss actors, but also the first Swiss actor to be engaged in Hollywood, was born in Basel and originally trained as a painter. From 1936, he performed as an actor on stage and in film and gave already in 1938 his directorial debut with "L'or dans la montagne", based on the novel by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, with Jean-Louis Barrault in the main role. Unlike most Swiss actors of his generation who exclusively appeared in Swiss German dialect movies and heimat films, Haufler acted, e.g., together with Heinz Rühmann, Gert Fröbe and Michel Simon in Ladislao Vajda's "Es geschah am hellichten Tage/It happened on broad daylight" (1958), one of the most gruesome Swiss child murder stories. For Kurt Früh, the director of classical Swiss movies, he acted in "Hinter den sieben Gleisen" (1959), where Haufler's performance as the bum Barbarossa stayed in the memory of generations of Swiss people. In 1962, Orson Welles casted Haufler for "Le proces/The Trial", and in 1965, he appeared in Bernhard Wicki's "Morituri" at the side of Marlon Brando and Yul Brynner. Haufler's last acting appearance was in Peter Lilienthal's "Abschied". Haufler, who directed 9 feature-length movies between 1937 and 1950, tried for almost ten years in vain to bring up the money for his autobiographical movie "Der Stumme", based on the novel by Swiss author Otto F. Walter. Under the overwhelming impression of having failed and after having been left by his second wife, Haufler hung himself up in his small apartment at Neptunstrasse in Zurich.