Leonard Steckel

Leonard Steckel (18 January 1901 – 9 February 1971) was a German-Jewish actor and director of stage and screen. Steckel was born as Leonhard Steckel in Knihinin, a Galician town that is today a district of the city Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He began his career as a stage actor and spent the duration of World War II in exile in Zürich, Switzerland, where he had gone to work at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. It was during this time that he began to direct. Steckel was killed in a major rail accident on 9 February 1971 in Aitrang, Germany.