Hardy Krueger
So many lives in one
Hardy Kruger died at the age of 93.
© imago/APress
Hardy Krüger has lived many lives: at the front, as a deserter, in Hollywood and as a traveler. Always with you: a strong conscience.
To speak of Hardy Krüger’s “moving life” would be an understatement. It can only be explained by outrageous luck and several miracles that Krüger survived the war and was able to start a successful acting career.
His parents had sent him to the elite boarding school of the Adolf Hitler schools, and he was in front of the camera for the first time for the Nazi propaganda film “Young Eagles”. His attitude changed during the filming. He met his longtime friend Hans Söhnker (1903-1981), who helped Jews escape and opened Krüger’s eyes. “I had to make a decision: Do I believe my father or my son?” says Krüger a few years ago in an interview with “One Day” about the “painful process” of re-education, which lasted for several months.
At times, Söhnker even used Krüger as a courier. A double life followed at school in Sonthofen. In the final days of the war, the 16-year-old was drafted into the front with the Waffen SS Division “Nibelungen” but refused to shoot at Black US soldiers. He was sentenced to death and managed to desert.
The filmstar
After another successful escape, this time from US captivity, Krüger went back – literally – from Tyrol to Berlin. In Hamburg he was finally accepted as an extra at the Schauspielhaus, his ticket to the world of acting. In Germany he quickly became a star, but he wanted more. Although he knew that being a German would not be easy, he went abroad. First to Paris, where he was rebuffed because of his homeland, then to London, where director Roy Baker (93) discovered him and cast him as a German fighter pilot in “One came through”. His international breakthrough.
From then on he played alongside greats like John Wayne (1907-1979), Roger Moore (1927-2017) or Sean Connery (1930-2020) and was directed by Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) or Howard Hawks (1896- 1977) and in productions like “Hatari!”, “The Flight of the Phoenix” or “The Red Tent”. Things should also work out in France: he organized the financing for the French film “Sundays with Sybill” and played the male lead. The film won the 1963 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Krüger received awards such as the Great Cross of Merit, the Bavarian Film Prize, the Golden Camera, the Federal Film Prize, etc – and began a new life again.
The Traveler
From the eighties he increasingly withdrew from acting. He reported on travel in his cinematic and award-winning travel stories “Globetrotter”. With his book “A Farm in Africa” he told about his second home, a farm at the foot of Kilimanjaro, and started a career as a writer.
Privately he had three marriages, had three children and lived alternately in California and Germany with his third wife, the American photographer and author Anita Park, for more than 40 years. Not much is known about love affairs and scandals, only the relationship with his son Hardy Krüger junior (53), also an actor, made headlines at times – father and son are said to have had no contact for years.
According to his website, Hardy Krüger counted among his friends, in addition to his great inspiration Hans Söhnker, names such as Helmut Schmidt (1918-2015), James Stewart (1908-1997) and Richard Attenborough (1923-2014).
The activist
But the “enemies” section on his website was probably even more important to him. There he vents his anger at swastika daubs and Nazis in the state parliament. “I was brought up as a Nazi at an Adolf Hitler school and I say it with all my might. Nazis are my deadly enemies”, quotes him the “Bild am Sonntag”.
He founded and supported organizations fighting right-wing extremism into old age. He visited schools, gave lectures, gave many interviews in which he spoke about topics such as guilt and responsibility, always using his own example. He told Der Spiegel in 2019: “The disenchantment with politics in the 1930s meant that Hitler became possible at all. We have to keep an eye on our politicians, but we mustn’t turn our backs on them.”
Hardy Krüger died on January 19, 2022 at the age of 93. He left the world more than just a few classic films.