Goodbye to a Legend

Hildegard Knef was a legend, a woman who excelled in many fields and made the best of the blows life dealt her. She was born in 1925 in the southern-German town of Ulm. On Friday, she died of a lung disease at a Berlin hospital, aged 76.

Knef was an actress, a singer and a writer. Her personality was said to be as complex as the characters she portrayed on stage and in the movies. She was described as "irritable, impatient, charming, humorous, fascinating and enchanting."

First post-war movie star

In 1946, Knef became the star of the very first movie made in Germany after the Second World War: Wolfgang Staudte's classic Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us).

The film was shot in the rubble of post-war Berlin and deals with the issue of German guilt. However it doesn't concentrate on Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis, but on the majority of ordinary Germans who blindly followed their orders.

In this exceptional movie, Knef played a young woman who survives a concentration camp and then runs into one of her tormentors after the end of the war.

Scandals and Praise

In the 1950s, Knef caused a scandal in Germany when she played a nude-scene in Die Sünderin (The Sinner), a movie about a prostitute. It was the first glimpse of nudity in a mainstream German film and came as a shock to the bourgeois audiences of those days.

Conservatives held rallies in front of movie theaters and Knef received death-threats from morally outraged movie-goers. Germany's catholic church called on the faithful to boycott the film -- giving it all the more publicity.

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Hollywood calls

The commotion Knef caused in Germany was even noticed in America. Hollywood producer David Selznick invited her to come to the U.S. and signed a seven-year contract with the German "Fräulein".

Once in America, Knef changed her last name to Neff because that was easier to pronounce for native English-speakers.

In the 1950s, she starred in a number of Hollywood productions like Decision before Dawn and in Diplomatic Courier.

In 1953, she played a lead role in The Snows of Kilimanjaro alongside Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. In this film, she also had to sing: she gave a rendition of Cole Porter's You do Something to Me. When the composer saw the movie and her musical performance, he immediately hired her for the stage.

Broadway fame

On Broadway, Neff appeared in Cole Porter's musical Silk Stockings. For two and a half years, she played the lead role of Ninotchka in this production alongside Don Ameche. Each of the 675 performances of Silk Stockings was sold out.

But Neff's luck began to fade. She was no longer the bright blond "Fräulein" - she was getting older. By the time the final curtain for Silk Stockings fell, Hollywood had lost interest in her.

The actress decided to return to her native Germany. Hilde Neff again became Hildegard Knef.

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Second career as a recording artist

In the 1960s, Knef started a second career as a singer. Her husky voice and her unique style of singing - which bordered more on speaking than actually singing the lyrics - soon became her trademark. The American singer Ella Fitzgerald allegedly called her "the greatest singer in the world without a voice".

The chansons Knef recorded in the 60s are worlds apart from the superficial, kitschy German pop songs of the time. The lyrics strongly reflect her complex character and personality.

One of her most successful songs was Für mich soll's rote Rosen regnen (Red roses should rain down on me). Here she boldly demands her piece of the pie, her share of happiness: "The world should revolve around me and all kinds of miracles should happen just for me!"

In another song Von nun an ging's bergab (It was downhill from here), she ironically laments the fact that her life was indeed anything but rosy. She recounts her life story and comments every episode with the chorus: "it was downhill from here."

Making the best of bad luck

Knef suffered many setbacks in her private life during the 1960s and 70s: she was divorced from her husband and had to come to terms with being an aging diva.

Worse than that, however, she was also diagnosed with cancer.

She tried to cope with life's blows by openly talking and writing about them.

In 1970, she published her life story, titled The Gift Horse. Her literary talent and the frankness with which she talked about cancer earned her much respect.

The Gift Horse

was translated into 17 languages and became an international best-seller. To this day, it remains one of the most successful books ever written in Germany.