In the 1929 film Pandora’s Box, Fritz Kortner plays Dr. Schön.
Dr. Schön is a powerful newspaper publisher and one of the men whose relationship with Lulu drives the film’s plot. He is portrayed as socially established but emotionally vulnerable to Lulu, creating a conflict between public respectability and private desire.
Fritz Kortner was an Austrian actor and director who worked extensively in German-language theatre and cinema. His performance contrasts with Louise Brooks’s Lulu, whose openness and independence destabilize the conventional social order represented by Schön.
The character comes from Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays, although the film rearranges and condenses material for the screen. Dr. Schön should not be confused with Alwa Schön, his son, another important character in the story. Jack the Ripper appears later as a separate figure associated with the film’s tragic conclusion.