Fritz Lang's Real Name: Friedrich Christian Anton Lang

Quick answer: Fritz Lang was born Friedrich Christian Anton Lang on December 5, 1890, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. "Fritz" is the common German nickname for Friedrich. He died on August 2, 1976, in Beverly Hills, California (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Category note: batch-03 lists Lang under "musicians," but he was a film director. We cover him here as a filmmaker.

Early life

Lang's father, Anton, was an architect and construction manager, and his mother, Pauline, had converted from Judaism to Catholicism. He briefly studied engineering and architecture in Vienna, then painting in Munich and Paris. He served in the Austrian army in World War I and was wounded. While recovering, he started writing screenplays.

Weimar cinema

Lang moved to Berlin and directed for the Decla and UFA studios, often working with his second wife, screenwriter Thea von Harbou. Major films include:

• Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922)
• Die Nibelungen (1924)
• Metropolis (1927): the science-fiction epic of a divided future city. Its restored version is listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register (UNESCO).
• Woman in the Moon (1929), which introduced the countdown before a rocket launch.
• M (1931): starring Peter Lorre as a child murderer, an early sound-film masterpiece.

Leaving Germany

According to Lang's own later account, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels offered him a top film-industry post in 1933 after The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was banned. Lang said he left for Paris soon after, though historians note his departure was less sudden than he described. Von Harbou, who joined the Nazi Party, stayed in Germany, and they divorced in 1933 (Britannica).

Hollywood

In the U.S., Lang made social dramas and film noir, including Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), Scarlet Street (1945) and The Big Heat (1953). He became a U.S. citizen in 1939. He returned to Germany for his final films, ending with The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960). He appeared as himself in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963).