You were born December 5, 1890, the son of a Viennese architect who wanted you to be an architect too.
I ran away from home to become a painter and went first to Brussels and then to Bruges and there I saw my first film. I forget what the title of it was--it was a film about the French Revolution or some such thing. Then I went to Paris and traveled through Marseilles and on to Asia Minor, the South Seas, Africa, China, Japan, and Russia for almost a year. I lived by painting postcards and drawing cartoons for newspapers. Then I went back to Paris and started to work ther in a private art school. Then the First World War broke out and I left Paris on the last train and escaped to Vienna. When I came back to Austria in 1914 I was drafted into the Austrian Imperial Army and in 1915 I was sent to war.
At the Front you were wounded and decorated.
I was shot in the shoulder in Italy and went back to Vienna. I was rather unhappy because as a lieutenant I didn't have enough money to live on. Then one day I was sitting in a cafe in my uniform (there were several decorations on it) and a man came up to me and offered me a job, and I asked him very haughtily who he was. His name was Peter Ostermeyer and he was a director of the Red Cross Theatre. The play which he was producing was about an Austrian lieutenant who was saved by his servant (every officer had a man who helped him). I asked him what I would be paid and he said 750 kronen. Now as a lieutenant I was getting only 120 kronen, so you can imagine what this meant to me. Sometimes--very seldom--I get a bright idea, so I said to him, "That is very little," and he responded that he couldn't pay me more than one thousand! So naturally I agreed. Then he developed another problem: he was planning for me to play a German officer who appeared only in the second act, but because of my Viennese dialect he had to give me the main part.
Fritz Lang was born in Vienna on December 5th 1890. He was the son of Anton and Paula Lang. Lang's ancestors and blood was Jewish, but his mother was raised Roman Catholic. Paula then raised him to be a Catholic. Lang lost the sight in his right eye from figting in WWI. This is why he wore a monocle in that eye. In 1918, he was sent back to Vienna because he was unfit for battle. After getting his job with Peter Ostermeyer in the Red Cross Theatre, Lang met Erich Pommer. Pommer owned his own film production company named Decla-Bioscop in Berlin. Pommer did not trust the way Lang looked, but gave him a job as a script doctor in the Script Department. Lang wrote many screenplays and was often dissatisfied with the changes made in his scripts when they were produced. Lang asked Pommer if he could direct one of his screenplay's called Halbblut. Pommer agreed and Lang became a director. He married Thea von Harbou in 1921 after she had helped him on some films. She was a scenarist, and helped him with many other films in the following years. Lang lived in Berlin until the Nazis became interested in his work. He then moved to America in the 1930's to get away from them and made the rest of his films in Hollywood.
Lang received many awards and recognition on his films throughout the world. Most he got during the last years of his life. At the 1963 Berlin Film Festival, he got the Golden Ribbon of Motion Picture Arts. In 1965 he was bestowed the award of Officier des Arts et Lettres from the French gorvernment. Lang finally returned to Vienna in 1971. There he recieved the highest award Austria could give: the Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna. The Directors Guild of America held a gala in his honor in 1973.
Lang died in Hollywood on Aug. 2, 1976. You can see his grave by clicking here .