ALBERS, HANS

ALBERS, HANS (1892–1960), film* actor; the debonair hero in many of Germany's early sound productions. Born in Hamburg, he made his stage de´but 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 convalescing 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 regularly cast as an adulterer or well-dressed rogue. With the December 1929 release of Germany's first sound film, Carl Froelich's* Die Nacht geho¨rt uns (The night belongs to us), he became the first German to speak on celluloid. A boxoffice hit, Nacht transformed his career. Siegfried Kracauer* remarked that during 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 Ma¨dchen 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 quarters as well as on [the wealthy] Kurfu¨rstendamm. 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.