Albers, Hans

(1891-1960)

   Actor. Albers was an extraordinarily popular performer whose breakthrough as a "legitimate" theater actor came in 1928 with Heinz Hilpert's production of Ferdinand Bruckner's The Criminals. Albers's career began in 1911, playing in provincial theaters and short silent films. His stunning blue eyes helped him get villain roles in German silents, which were shot on orthographic film stock; the film made his eyes print white, giving him a horrifying aspect. Albers made more than 100 silent films between 1917 and 1929, almost every one of them a failure. He worked in several Berlin theaters prior to 1928, specializing in comedies as the young lover. Soon after The Criminals premiered, Albers appeared in one of Germany's first sound movies, Die Nacht gehört uns (The Night Belongs to Us) and critics raved about his ability to "quatsch," to improvise naturally as if he were saying his lines for the first time. Critics and audiences alike found themselves attracted to what seemed like an experience of eavesdropping on personal conversations. "He appeared on film the way he appeared in life: simple, impudent, cynical, and humane: at that moment, Hans Albers became a film star" (Geza von Cz-iffra, Kauf dir einen bunten Luftballon [Berlin: Herbig, 1975], 161). The last significant theater production in which Albers appeared before he devoted himself almost entirely to films was Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings's What Price Glory? (1929) with Fritz Kortner. Albers's first movie to win him international recognition was Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1931), with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings. In the Third Reich, Albers became Germany's highest-paid actor, second only to actress Zarah Leander.

   Albers had problems with the Nazis from the beginning of their takeover in 1933, as his lifelong relationship with Jewish actress Hansi Burg consistently brought him into conflict with the authorities. So did his refusal to fill out "Aryan" certification forms, as well as his insistence that his name always appear over the title of any film in which he appeared. Because of his well-documented antipathy toward the Nazi regime, his career resumed in the immediate postwar period with little delay.