Maximilian Young

[Ellyn Krucke]

Ridingbase layer from Maximilian's new children's collection, essential in the wardrobe for young riders, created in technical fabric with an innovative design suitable for high performance and daily use.

Lightweight, breathable, 360 elastic and quick-drying advanced technological fabric to provide maximum comfort and flexibility, granting maximum freedom of movement and a fresh sensation during the summer months or as an inner layer during the winter.

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St. Maxmilian Kolbe is my favorite saint. He lived a truly eucharistic life of missionary zeal, radiant holiness, and sacrificial love. Yet, his life of holiness was no accident; he did not wake up one morning a saint. Rather, his holiness was the result of constant spiritual effort that cultivated an intimate relationship with our Blessed Mother, with whom he was deeply in love, and a burning love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Maximilian, born Raymond, entered the Conventual Franciscan Novitiate at the young age of 16. Much of his spiritual development occurred during these formative years, as well as his years in preparation for the priesthood. Reading his journal entries during this period of his life, one is struck by three major themes: his ongoing health problems, his transformative relationship with his spiritual director, and his struggles with scrupulosity.

By the time of his ordination on April 28, 1918, his journal entries reflect that the fearful, anxiety-ridden Maximilian is gone, and a portrait of a humble, confident, and holy young friar emerges. He speaks ceaselessly of the virtues of trust and humility, and of his burning desire to be the greatest saint possible.

Sam, I love your devotion to St. Maximilian. He is also my favorite. I took the name Raymond at confirmation after a relative (the cracker jack CCD team never bothered telling us it was supposed to be after a saint), but years later discovered St. Maximilian (as you indicate, his birth name was Raymond) and adopted him as my patron. He is my hero. Just an aside to you or anyone who may be interested, the Militia of the Immaculata (the group St. Maximilian founded) sends out a daily e-mail containing a quote from his writings. People can sign up at . God bless you!

His range of portrayals included personalities as diverse as Venezuelan leader Simn Bolvar, Russian emperor Peter the Great, and physicist Albert Einstein. For his role as Vladimir Lenin in the television film Stalin (1992) he won the Golden Globe Award. Schell also performed in a number of stage plays, including a celebrated performance as Prince Hamlet.[2]

Schell was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. His elder sister was the internationally noted actress Maria Schell; he produced the documentary tribute My Sister Maria in 2002.

Schell was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Margarethe (ne Noe von Nordberg), an actress who ran an acting school, and Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a Swiss poet, novelist, playwright, and pharmacy owner.[3][4] His parents were Roman Catholic.[4]

Schell's father was never enthusiastic about young Maximilian becoming an actor like his mother, feeling that it could not lead to "real happiness". However, Schell was surrounded by acting in his early youth:

I grew up in a theatre atmosphere and took it for granted. I remember the theatre, as a child, the way most people remember their mother's cooking. Acting was all around me, and so was poetry. I made my debut in the theatre at the age of three, in Vienna . . .[4]

In Zrich, Schell "grew up reading the classics" and, when he was ten, wrote his first play.[4] Schell recalls that as a child, growing up surrounded by the theatre, he took acting for granted and did not want to become an actor at first: "What I wanted was to become a painter, a musician, or a playwright," like his father.[4]

Schell later attended the University of Zurich for a year, where he also played soccer and was on the rowing team, along with writing for newspapers as a part-time journalist for income. Following the end of World War II, he moved to Germany where he enrolled in the University of Munich and studied philosophy and art history. During breaks, he would sometimes return home to Zrich or stay at his family's farm in the country so he could write in seclusion:

My father and my uncle hunt deer there, but I do not like to hunt. I like to walk through the forest by myself. In 1948 and 1949, when I wrote part of my first novel, which I have never shown to anyone, I isolated myself in one of the hunting cabins for three months, without a telephone, without electricity, with heat only from a large open fireplace.[4]

Schell then returned to Zrich, where he served in the Swiss Army for a year, after which he attended the sixth form of University College School, London, for one year before re-entering the University of Zurich for another year, and later, the University of Basel for six months. During that period, he acted professionally in small parts, in both classical and modern plays, and decided that he would from then on devote his life to acting rather than pursue academic studies:

I then decided, either you are a scientist or an artist. . . . To me it is much more important . . . to admire and feel and be stimulated and inspired. . . Art comes out of chaos, not out of a mechanical analyzing. So as soon as I made up my mind, there was no sense any more in continuing to study and in getting a degree. It is like an award; it does not mean anything in itself. . . . A university degree is just a title. I don't think an artist should have a title. It was time for me to concentrate on acting.[4]

Schell's film debut was in the German anti-war film Kinder, Mtter und ein General (Children, Mothers, and a General, 1955). It was the story of five mothers who confronted a German general at the front line, after learning that their sons, some as young as 15, had been "slated to be cannon fodder on behalf of the Third Reich." The film co-starred Klaus Kinski as an officer, with Schell playing the part of an officer-deserter.[8] The story, which according to one critic, "depicts the insanity of continuing to fight a war that is lost," would become a "trademark" for many of Schell's future roles: "Schell's sensitivity in his portrayal of a young deserter disillusioned with fighting became a trademark of his acting."[9]

Schell subsequently acted in seven more films made in Europe before going to the U.S.[10] Among those was The Plot to Assassinate Hitler (also 1955).[citation needed] Later in the same year he had a supporting role in Jackboot Mutiny, in which he plays "a sensitive philosopher", who uses ethics to privately debate the arguments for assassinating Hitler.[9]

In 1958 Schell was invited to the United States to act in the Broadway play, "Interlock" by Ira Levin, in which Schell played the role of an aspiring concert pianist.[11] He made his Hollywood debut in the World War II film, The Young Lions (1958), as the commanding German officer in another anti-war story, with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. German film historian Robert C. Reimer writes that the film, directed by Edward Dmytryk, again drew on Schell's German characterisation to "portray young officers disillusioned with a war that no longer made sense."[9]

In 1960, Schell returned to Germany and played the title role in William Shakespeare's Hamlet for German TV, a role that he would play on two more occasions in live theatre productions during his career. Along with Laurence Olivier, Schell is considered "one of the greatest Hamlets ever," according to one writer.[2] Schell recalled that when he played Hamlet for the first time, "it was like falling in love with a woman. ... not until I acted the part of Hamlet did I have a moment when I knew I was in love with acting."[4] Schell's performance of Hamlet was featured as one of the last episodes of the American comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1999.

In 1959, Schell acted in the role of a defence attorney on a live TV production, Judgment at Nuremberg, a fictionalized re-creation of the Nuremberg War Trials, in an edition of Playhouse 90. His performance in the TV drama was considered so good that he and Werner Klemperer were among the only members of the original cast selected to play the same parts in the 1961 film version. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, which was the first win for a German-speaking actor since World War II.[12]

I received the most wonderful letter from Maria. She wrote, 'Now, when you have my letter in your hand, a beautiful day is coming for you. I will be with you, proud, because I knew such recognition would come one day, leading to something even greater and better. . . . not only because you are close to me but because I count you among the truly great actors, and it is wonderful that besides that you are my brother.' Maria and I are very close.[4]

According to Reimer, Schell gave a "bravura performance," where he tried to defend his clients, Nazi judges, "by arguing that all Germans share a collective guilt" for what happened.[9] Biographer James Curtis notes that Schell prepared for his part in the movie by "reading the entire forty-volume record of the Nuremberg trials."[13] Author Barry Monush describes the impact of Schell's acting:

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