Albers, Hans

(1892-1960)

   film* actor; the debonair hero in many of Ger-many's early sound productions. Born in Hamburg, he made his stage debut with a touring company shortly before World War I. During the war, in which he was twice wounded, he took bit parts while on leave. While he was conva-lescing the second time, he began acting in light comedy. By 1920 he was in Berlin,* appearing in roles on stage and in silent films. During 1926-1928 he performed with Max Reinhardt's* Deutsches Theater. Before 1930 he was reg-ularly cast as an adulterer or well-dressed rogue. With the December 1929 re-lease of Germany's first sound film, Carl Froelich's* Die Nacht gehört uns (The night belongs to us), he became the first German to speak on celluloid. A box-office hit, Nacht transformed his career. Siegfried Kracauer* remarked that dur-ing 1930-1933 he "played the heroes of films in which typically bourgeois daydreams found outright fulfillment; his exploits gladdened the hearts of worker audiences, and in Mädchen in Uniform we see his photograph worshiped [sic] by the daughters of aristocratic families." Equally successful in support of Marlene Dietrich* in The Blue Angel (1930), he became Germany's screen idol. "Each Albers film," Kracauer recorded, "filled the houses in proletarian quar-ters as well as on [the wealthy] Kurfürstendamm. This human dynamo with the heart of gold embodied on the screen what everyone wished to be in life." While he remained in Germany and acted until his death, he never matched the recognition he achieved in the Weimar years.

   REFERENCES:Ephraim Katz, Film Encyclopedia; Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler; Schumann, Hans Albers.