Early Years
Hildegard Knef was born in Ulm. She began studying acting in 1940, aged 14. She appeared in several films before the fall of the Third Reich, but most were not released until after World War II.
During the Battle of Berlin, Knef dressed as a soldier in order to stay with her then lover Ewald von Demandowsky, joining him in defence of Schmargendorf. She was later sent to a prisoner of war camp.
Her best known film roles were "Susanne Wallner" in Wolfgang Staudte's film Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us), the first film released after the Second World War in East Germany and produced by DEFA); and in 1950, "Marina" in Die Sünderin (The Sinner), in which she performed a brief nude scene, the first in German film history, causing a scandal. When the Roman Catholic Church protested, she responded vehemently, “I can't understand all the tumult - five years after Auschwitz.”
In the 1960s, she appeared in a number of low budget films such as Hammer films The Lost Continent.
She appeared in the 1975 screen adaptation of the Hans Fallada novel, Every Man Dies Alone directed by Alfred Vohrer, 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 Carlsbad, then in Czechoslovakia.
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Famous quotes related to early years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)