The Conrad Veidt Society

HAMPSTEAD & HIGHGATE GAZETTE

 

Friday April 10 1998

 

MOVIE LEGEND VEIDT'S ASHES 'HOME' AT LAST

 

By Amanda Gilbraith

 

The remains of the distinguished German film actor Conrad Veidt have been brought to Golders Green Crematorium after years in a cellar on the other side of the world.

 

Last Friday a group of fans - who had traveled from, among other places, New York, Berlin and Copenhagen - gathered at the crematorium in Hoop Lane to place at rest the ashes of of the actor and his third wife, Lilli, on the 55th anniversary of his death.

 

The arrival of the casket, containing an art deco solid bronze urn, marks the end of a long journey to bring Veidt back to Britain. After fleeing the Nazi regime in Germany, where he was blacklisted by Hitler, he settled in Platt's Lane, Hampstead. He became a British subject.

 

Born in Berlin in 1893, Veidt starred in some 100 films during a career spanning 30 years, which swept him from Germany to London and on to Hollywood, where he featured in such classics as Casablanca, The Thief of Bagdad, Dark Journey, and the pioneering silent movie, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - his big break.

 

Veidt died at the age of 50 on a golf course, from a massive heart attack. He was cremated in Hollywood. His widow, Lilli, who was half-Jewish, then moved to New York, where she laid his ashes at a crematorium nearby for 30 years until her death in 1980.

 

Her body was cremated and, as she wished, the ashes mingled with Veidt's. From then on, little was heard about the urn.

 

For more than a decade it languished in the basement of a house in California belonging to Lilli's nephew, Ivan Rado, who inherited Veidt memorabilia and the urn after his aunt's death.

 

When Mr. Rado learned of a fan club set up eight years ago by Jim Rathlesberger, a 50-year old civil servant from Sacramento in California, he decided to hand over all the memorabilia, including the urn. The urn eventually came into the hands of the Conrad Veidt Society after Mr. Rathlesberger put an international appeal in the Society's newsletter for ideas as to where the ashes should be placed.

 

A fan from Hendon, Vivienne Phillips, 71, suggested Golders Green Crematorium because of Veidt's many happy years spent in Hampstead. After unanimous agreement among members, Mr. Rathlesberger removed the case from his garage in California and brought it to London.

 

The Society has managed to secure a 10-year lease on a space in the columbarium for 400 pounds, which they hope to renew as money gradually trickles in. The cost of securing a plot in perpetuity at Golders Green - 2,860 pounds - is just too great for the Society.

 

''I feel shattered because it has been such a build-up and now it's finally over and he is here, finally at home,'' said Miss Phillips, who has been a Veidt fan since 1940 when she first saw him in The Thief of Bagdad.

 

''This has been a wish of mine to bring him home ever since that day in 1943 when I first heard of his death. For 55 years his ashes have been shunted from one place to another, which was dreadful, and now he is in a proper place together with Lilli.''

 

(Photographs not reproduced here: Conrad Veidt at his home in Platt's Lane, Hampstead, and a color photo of Jim Rathlesberger and Vivienne Phillips at Golders Green.)

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