Jan Heinrich Tilman Kiwe (born Eduard Heinrich Kiefer),[1] also known as Til Kiver or Till Kiwe, (b. 7 June 1910 in Aachen; d. 30 November 1995 in Munich[2]) was a German actor, voice actor and screenwriter. He famously played Frick a German guard in The Great Escape in 1963
Kiefer received singing instruction at the Conservatory in Aachen and did his Abitur in 1934. From 1934 to 1937 he studied ethnology in Cologne and Baltimore. With Adolf Manz in Cologne, and at the Studio of Dramatic Art in Baltimore, he had himself trained as an actor.
Before the Second World War broke out, he took several trips to faraway lands, among them an expedition to the Tibesti Mountains in Chad in 1938. He took part in the war in the Deutsches Afrikakorps, and on 18 May 1943, while he held the rank of captain, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
By this time, though, he had already become a prisoner of war after his Afrikakorps unit had been forced to surrender. He was taken to a camp in Colorado, from which he made several escape attempts. On one occasion, Kiefer made it by train as far as St. Louis before he was recaptured.
After coming home from wartime imprisonment, he changed his name and in 1946 debuted in Munich as an actor at the experimental theatre Die Spieler ("The Players"). Kiwe acted in Munich until 1972, mainly at the Junges Theater ("Young Theatre"), the Munich Kammerspiele and the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel ("Bavarian State Playhouse"). Among the roles that he played were Ruprecht in The Broken Jug, Leander in Franz Grillparzer's Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen ("Waves of the Sea and of Love"), Eilif in Mother Courage and Her Children, Jim in The Glass Menagerie, John Rand in Gerhart Hauptmann's Schluck and Jau and Professor Higgins in Pygmalion. Kiwe likewise appeared in several Heimatfilme and repeatedly portrayed Wehrmacht officers, such as Claus von Stauffenberg's adjutant Werner von Haeften in Jackboot Mutiny (German title: Es geschah am 20. Juli — "It Happened on 20 July"), and, in a supporting role in Bernhard Wicki's wartime drama Die Brücke ("The Bridge"), a lieutenant and bearer of the Knight's Cross who in the war's dying days was rushing to keep ahead of the looming American advance.[3] In Darkness Fell on Gotenhafen, he played an SS officer. In the second part of Fritz Umgelter's classic television series Am grünen Strand der Spree, entitled "Der General", he is seen alongside Wolfgang Büttner, Hans Pössenbacher and Anneli Granget as Major Illing, stationed as part of a divisional staff in northern Norway. Even though Kiwe was quite busy as an actor, he still found time to work as an ethnologist. He went travelling and in 1953–1954, he found himself in the Atacama Desert, on Easter Island and on the Mato Grosso Plateau. Further trips took him to Sudan and once again to the Tibesti range. He recorded his impressions for UNESCO as producer and director for 17 documentary films, among others Wüste, Kupfer und die heilige Carmen; Menschen, Technik und moderne Waffen; Wege aus dem Dunkel; The Call of the Condor; Assuan und seine Folgen and Pearlstring of the Gods. Beginning in 1972, Kiwe worked as a theatre director and staged, among other plays, The Broken Jug, Pygmalion, Volpone and Finden Sie, dass Konstanze sich richtig verhält? ("Do You Find that Constance is Behaving Herself?"), based on W. Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife. From 1956 onwards, he was to be seen on television and played, among other roles, Superintendent Peters, alongside Josef Dahmen, in the crime series Hafenpolizei in 1963 for 39 episodes. He also wrote a few teleplays and screenplays, among them Auf den Wegen nach Rom (1959), Stahlschrank SG 3 (1966) and Flut über Polesine (1967). As a voice actor he lent Errol Flynn, David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Jean Marais his voice for German-language overdubs, and at the same time wrote dubbing scripts and worked as a dubbing director.
Til Kiwe was married and was father to a son and a daughter. He died at 85 in Munich. His grave is to be found at the city's Neuer Südfriedhof ("New South Cemetery").[1]