1. Hans Albers was the biggest male movie star in Germany between 1930 and 1960 and one of the most popular German actors of the twentieth century.
15 Facts About Hans Albers
1. 2.
Hans Albers was born in Hamburg, the son of a butcher, and grew up in the district of St Georg.
3.
Hans Albers was seriously interested in acting by his late teens and took acting classes without the knowledge of his parents.
4.
In 1915 Albers was drafted to serve in the German Army in World War I, but was wounded early on.
5.
Soon thereafter, Hans Albers played big-mouthed strong man Mazeppa alongside Marlene Dietrich in her star-making classic Der blaue Engel.
6.
Hans Albers himself shot to fame in 1930 with the movie The Copper and constantly enhanced his star status with similar daredevil roles in the 1930s.
7.
Hans Albers was probably at his best when teamed-up with fellow German movie legend Heinz Ruhmann, as in Bombs on Monte Carlo and Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war.
8.
In 1943, Hans Albers was paid a huge sum of money to star in UFA's big-budgeted anniversary picture Munchhausen but was careful not to give the impression that he was endorsing the National Socialist regime, which was indeed never asked of him.
9.
Hans Albers's decline was exacerbated by his increasing alcoholism during the 1950s.
10.
Hans Albers collapsed during a theater performance with massive internal bleeding and died months later on 24 July 1960 at a sanatorium in Kempfenhausen near Lake Starnberg at the age of 68.
11.
Hans Albers was cremated and subsequently buried at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg, the city of his birth.
12.
Outside of Northern Europe, Hans Albers remains virtually unknown; however the image of an older man in a seaman's cap and raincoat playing accordion and singing remains familiar internationally.
13.
Hans Albers actually had no significant experience on the water, this being restricted to a one-day trip to Heligoland.
14.
Many of Hans Albers' songs were humorous tales of drunken, womanizing sailors on shore-leave, with double entendres such as "It hurts the first time, but with time, you get used to it" in reference to a girl falling in love for the first time.
15.
Hans Albers' songs were often peppered with expressions in Low German, which is spoken in Northern Germany.