Hans Steinhoff

Hans Steinhoff (10 March 1882 – 20 April 1945) was a German film director, best known for the propaganda films he produced in Nazi Germany.

Life and career

Steinhoff started his career as a stage actor in the 1900s and later worked as a stage director. Following a decline in popularity of theater after World War I, he transitioned to the film industry. He directed his first silent film, Clothes Make the Man, the adaptation of a novel by Gottfried Keller, in 1921. Steinhoff went on to direct several other popular commercial films before transitioning to his career as a propagandist.

Steinhoff was also very unpopular with many of his actors. Hans Albers called him "the greatest asshole of the century", while O. W. Fischer referred to him as "browner than Joseph Goebbels and blacker than Heinrich Himmler.

Selected filmography

The False Dimitri (1922) Inge Larsen (1923) Man Against Man (1924) Countess Maritza (1925) The Man Who Sold Himself (1925) Sons in Law (1926) Vienna - Berlin (1926) The Master of Death (1926) Family Gathering in the House of Prellstein (1927) The Tragedy of a Lost Soul (1927) The Bordello in Rio (1927) Angst (1928) When the Guard Marches (1928) The Alley Cat (1929) The Three Kings (1929) Love's Carnival (1930) Everybody Wins (1930) My Leopold (1931) Headfirst into Happiness (1931) The Paw (1931) The True Jacob (1931) Scampolo (1932) Madame Wants No Children (1933) Love Must Be Understood (1933) Hitlerjunge Quex (1933) Decoy (1934) The Island (1934) Enjoy Yourselves (1934) Mother and Child (1934) The Old and the Young King (1935) The Valley of Love (1935) A Woman of No Importance (1936) An Enemy of the People (1937) Gestern und heute (1938) Dance on the Volcano (1938), with Gustaf Gründgens as Jean-Gaspard Deburau Robert Koch (1939) The Vulture Wally (1940) Ohm Krüger (1941) Rembrandt (1942) Gabriele Dambrone (1943) Melusine (1944)