German stage actor and singer, best remembered for his performance in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo and his recordings of workers songs, including many written by Hanns Eisler. He also made a memorable recording of “Peat Bog Soldiers”.
Busch first rose to prominence as an interpreter of political songs, particularly those of Kurt Tucholsky, in the Berlin Kabarett scene of the 1920s. He starred in the original 1928 production of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, as well as the subsequent 1931 film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. He also appeared in the movie Kuhle Wampe.
A lifelong communist, Busch fled Nazi Germany in 1933, accompanied by his wife, Eva Busch, and with the Gestapo on his heels, initially settling in the Netherlands. By 1938 they had divorced, without acrimony, as their lives diverged. He initially made his home in the Soviet Union, then Spain, then Belgium where he was interned during the German occupation and later imprisoned in Camp Gurs, France and Berlin.
Freed by the Red Army in 1945, he settled in East Berlin, where he acted in the first play to be produced in the American-occupied zone, Robert Ardrey’s Thunder Rock. He would go on to start his own record label and work with Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator at the “Berliner Ensemble”.
Germany’s most prestigious school for stage acting and directing is named after the actor, the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts (Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch”, HFS) in Berlin. Ernst Busch was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize for 1970–1971.
Ernst Busch died on 8 June 1980 at age 80 in Bernburg, East Germany.
Link to Wikipedia biography