Biographies: Hildegard Knef - Actor

Biographies

[1 Content]

A German actress, born in Ulm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, as Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef. She won many awards, including the Honorary Pompey Award in 1977 and 2001, the Carlo Vivarii Festival Prize in 1976, and the Berlin Festival Prize in 2000. Hildegard married three times: the first was producer Kurt Hirsch (1947-1952), the second was actor, director, and writer David Palastanga (1962-1976), and she gave birth to her only child, and the third was actor Paul Von Schell (1977-2002), and she remained with him until her death. Her credits include The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), Murderers Among Us (1946), Decision Before Dawn (1951), and Fedora (1978). Hildegard began studying acting at the beginning of World War II, and during the victories of the German Third Reich, she made many German films, most of which premiered after the war's end. When Germany was defeated, and Soviet soldiers invaded Berlin, Hilde was arrested and placed in prisoner camps, where she was able to escape and move to the western side of war-torn Berlin. Producer and director David Selznick invited her to Hollywood. He offered her a tempting contract, which she declined and returned to her homeland, and in 1951 she caused one of the greatest scandals in the history of German cinema when she performed a brief nude scene in the movie The Sinner (1951), and the Catholic Church protested. Her American husband, Kurt Hirsch, allowed her to work in Hollywood. Still, she did not get any significant work, except for her role in Hemingway’s masterpiece The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), so she returned to Europe, where she starred in German, French, and English films. Finally, America gave her a third chance, but this time was in the theater, where she appeared on Broadway. At the beginning of the sixties, she began singing, and in 1970, she wrote her memoirs, which achieved the highest sales. The world sympathized with her for her fight against cancer, which she was able to defeat several times. When Berlin gained independence, she returned to it and did not leave it until she died on February 1, 2002, as a result of a microbial lung infection.

21 December 2023
Toqa Hesham