Hildegard Knef

Lore & Background

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 a successful screen test, she went to the State Film School at Babelsberg, Berlin where she studied acting, ballet, and elocution. Joseph Goebbels wrote to her and asked to meet her but Knef's friends warned her to stay away from him. In 1933 her mother married Wilhelm Wulfestieg, a master shoemaker and leather goods manufacturer. This marriage produced Knef's half-brother, the jazz musician Heinz Wulfestieg. He died in August 1978 in Berlin at age 43 under mysterious circumstances. Hilde dealt with his sudden death in her book So Nicht (Not Like This). Hildegard Knef's stepfather lost his factory because his Jewish business partner was forced to flee and he could not align himself with the National Socialists. Thereafter the family ran a shoe repair shop in Berlin. Along with school, Knef took care of the household, worked in the shop and delivered the repaired shoes at night. 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.

Reader's Guide

Hildegard Knef was married three times: from 1947 to 1952 to Kurt Hirsch, a Jewish-American who came from the Sudetenland; from 1962 to 1976 to the British actor David Cameron (David Antonio Palastanga), who is the father of her daughter Christina Antonia (born May 16, 1968 in Munich); and from 1977 until her death in 2002 to Paul Rudolf Freiherr von Schell zu Bauschlott. Her two best-known film roles were Susanne Wallner in Wolfgang Staudte's film Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946), the first film released after the Second World War in East Germany; and Marina in Die Sünderin (1951), in which she performed a brief nude scene, the first in German film history, which caused a scandal. In 1948 she received the best-actress award from the Locarno Film Festival because of her role in Film Without a Title. In the 1960s she appeared in a number of low-budget films, including The Lost Continent. She appeared in the 1975 screen adaptation of Every Man Dies Alone, for which she won an award for best actress at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. During her career she performed in more than 50 films. David O. Selznick invited her to Hollywood, but she refused to agree to the conditions of the contract which reportedly included changing her name to Gilda Christian and pretending to be Austrian rather than German. Knef was cast as Hilde in the Hollywood film Decision Before Dawn (1951). The following year Knef's first husband encouraged her to try again for success in the U.S. She changed her name from Knef to Neff, but was offered only a supporting role in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). In 1955, Knef was offered a starring role in the Broadway musical Silk Stockings by Cole Porter. Her singing career started in the 1960s once her film career was not going very well. She launched 23 original albums with 320 different songs. She wrote the lyrics for 130 songs herself. Her autobiography Der geschenkte Gaul: Bericht aus einem Leben was published in 1970.

Did You Know?

• She became a US citizen in 1950, not 1948.
• She regained German citizenship in 2001, not 1999.
• She starred in Silk Stockings in 1955, not 1950.
• Her memoir Der geschenkte Gaul was published in 1970, not 1975.
• The anecdote about being invited to Hollywood by David O. Selznick and refusing due to name change and pretending to be Austrian is unsubstantiated and not confirmed as factual.