Hildegard Knef

Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef (; (28 December 1925 - 1 February 2002) was an actress, singer, and writer from Ulm in Germany.) She became a US citizen in 1950, but renewed her German citizenship in 2001.

Knef began her career in Berlin during World War II, and soon became well known for films including Die Mörder Sind Unter Uns in 1946, then Film Ohne Titel in 1948. In 1950, she played the lead in the controversial melodrama Die Sünderin , before relocating to New York City, where she starred in the musical Silk Stockings.

During the 1960s, she rebuilt her career in Germany as a pop-singer and author, in particular her memoirs Der Geschenkte Gaul She died in Berlin in February 2002.

Family and childhood Hildegard Knef was born in Ulm in 1925, the daughter of Hans Theodor Knef, a tobacco merchant of Flemish heritage and decorated First World War veteran, and his wife Frieda Auguste Knef (née Gröhn). When she was six months old her father died of syphilis. After that, she and her mother moved to Berlin where her mother worked in a factory and Hildegard attended middle school in Schöneberg. She began studying acting in 1940 at age 14. She left school at age 15 to become an apprentice animator with Universum Film AG. After she had a successful screen test, she went to the State Film School at Babelsberg, Berlin where she studied acting, ballet, and elocution. Joseph Goebbels, who was Hitler's propaganda minister, wrote to her and asked to meet her but Knef's friends warned her to stay away from him. The Soviets captured her and sent her to a prison camp. Her fellow prisoners helped her escape and return to Berlin. Von Demandowsky was executed by the Russians on 7 October 1946, but before that he secured for Knef the protection of the well-known character actor Viktor de Kowa in Berlin. De Kowa gave her the opportunity to be a mistress of ceremonies in the theatre that he had opened. Knef also got a part in Marcel Pagnol's Marius, which was directed by Boleslaw Barlog. De Kowa also directed Knef in other plays by Shakespeare, Pagnol, and George Abbott. The film was also criticised by the Catholic Church, which protested against the nude scene. Knef stated that she didn't understand the tumult that the film was creating. She wrote that it was totally absurd that people considered her nudity to be scandalous, as Germany was the country that had created Auschwitz and had caused so much horror. She also wrote, "I had the scandal, the producers got the money." released in English as Everyone Dies Alone in 1976, and for which she won an award for best actress at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, then Czechoslovakia.

Her reputation in the U.S. was hurt because of her nude scenes in the German film Die Sünderin (1951) and because she fell in love with a Nazi when she was 19.

Finally, in 1955, Knef was offered a starring role in the Broadway musical Silk Stockings by Cole Porter, which was based on the 1939 film Ninotchka, which had starred Greta Garbo in the title role. Knef had acted in at least 30 films in the United States and Europe but her triumph came in New York when she played Ninotchka, an unemotional Soviet commissar. The New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson described her rendition as "an immensely skillful performance." She sold more than three million records in total.

She launched 23 original albums with 320 different songs. She wrote the lyrics for 130 songs herself.

Publications

Her autobiography Der geschenkte Gaul: Bericht aus einem Leben (The Gift Horse: Report on a Life, 1970) was a candid recount of her life in Germany during and after the Second World War, and reportedly became the best-selling German book in the post-war years. Her second book Das Urteil (The Verdict, 1975) was a moderate success, and dealt with her struggle with breast cancer. Knef not only achieved international best-seller status, her books were also widely praised by critics because her autobiographies were "better-than-the-average celebrity's".

In The Gift Horse: Report on a Life Knef recounted her childhood and difficult life being an actress and singer while living in Hitler's Berlin and after the war in Europe and America. Arthur Cooper of Newsweek called it "a bitterly honest book and a very good one".

Personal life Knef was married three times and divorced twice. When she died, she was still married to her third husband, Paul von Schell.

On 1 February 2002, Knef died at the age of 76 of a lung infection in Berlin, where she had moved after German reunification. She smoked heavily for most of her life and suffered from emphysema.

Selected filmography

The Noltenius Brothers (1945) Frühlingsmelodie (1945) - Zwilling ohne Leberfleck Under the Bridges (1946) - Girl in Havelberg Murderers Among Us (1946) - Susanne Wallner Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1947) - Das Mädchen Kat Film Without a Title (1948) - Christine Fleming Journey to Happiness (1948) - Susanne Loevengaard The Sinner (1951) - Marina Miracles Still Happen (1951) - Anita Weidner Decision Before Dawn (1951) - Hilde Nights on the Road (1952) - Inge Hoffmann Diplomatic Courier (1952) - Janine Betki The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) - Countess Liz Night Without Sleep (1952) - Lisa Muller Alraune (1952) - Alraune Henriette (1952) - Rita Solar Illusion in a Minor Key (1952) - Lydia Bauer The Man Between (1953) - Bettina A Love Story (1954) - Lili Schallweiß, Schauspielerin It Was Always So Nice With You (1954) - minor role (uncredited) Confession Under Four Eyes (1954) - Hilde Schaumburg-Garden Svengali (1954) - Trilby Escape from Sahara (1958) - Madeleine Durand The Daughter of Hamburg (1958) - Maria Subway in the Sky (1959) - Lilli Hoffman The Man Who Sold Himself (1959) - Martina Schilling La strada dei giganti (1960) - Maria Luisa di Borbone No Orchids for Lulu (1962) - Baroness Geschwitz Ipnosi (1962) Caterina di Russia (1963) - Catherine the Great Landru (1963) - Mme X. / Madame Ixe The Threepenny Opera (1963) - Jenny Diver Ballade pour un voyou (1963) - Martha Schwartz And So to Bed (1963) - Callgirl Gibraltar (1964) - Elinor van Berg Mark of the Tortoise (1964) - Laura Lorelli Condemned to Sin (1964) - Alwine Mozambique (1964) - Ilona Valdez The Dirty Dozen (1967) - (uncredited) The Lost Continent (1968) - Eva Peters The Legend of Lylah Clare (1969) - voice of Lylah Clare Everyone Dies Alone (1976) - Anna Quangel Fedora (1978) - The Countess (1980) - Peter's mother Der Gärtner von Toulouse (1982) - Frau Théophot The Future of Emily (1984) - Mutter Paula Witchery (1988) - Lady in black Pocahontas (1995) - (German dub) An Almost Perfect Wedding (1999) - Marlene Wolf-Schönberg - Hennys aunt