Hildegard Knef

German actress & singer born December 28, 1925 (Ulm, Germany), died February 1, 2002 (Berlin, Germany). Hildegard Knef (known as Hildegarde Neff in the USA) was possibly the last German diva in the classical sense à la Marlene Dietrich, with whom she was friends. "Die Knef" (la Knef) started her carreer as a cartoonist at the UFA studios in Potsdam in 1942. Already in 1946 she appeared in a leading role in Germany's first big movie after WWII called Die Mörder Sind Unter Uns (The murderers are among us) - playing a former Nazi concentration camp prisoner. This unusual movie became a massive worldwide hit. After winning several acting awards (e.g. Film Festival Locarno in 1948) and several movies later Knef decided to play Marina in the movie Die Sünderin (The sinner) in which she performed the first nude scene in German film history. (At the time it sparked one of the largest scandals in German filmmaking history and drew the criticism of the Roman Catholic Church.) In 1951 Hollywood called and she started playing with the likes of Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and various others. It made her Germany's number one export. Her 1962 appearance as Pirate Jenny in Die Dreigroschenoper (Three Penny Opera) with Curd Jürgens and Gerd Fröbe is another classical piece showing her incredible acting abilities. After 12 years of Hollywood movies and Broadway appearances Knef decided to move back to Germany and focussed on her life not only as an international actress but also as a singer & author. In 1968 she won an award as the best female German singer singing German classics such as Für Mich Soll's Rote Rosen Regnen, which even became a top 40 hit again in 1992 when she was re-recording her classic with German Punk Rock / New Wave band Extrabreit. Suffering from breast-cancer in the mid 1970s Knef decided to work more and more as an author and published several worldwide bestsellers including her autobiography called Der Geschenkte Gaul (The Gift Horse). Knef passed away in the beginning of 2002 after a long fight against cancer.