When Hildegard Knef, this great artist, wrote to her makeup artist, it went like this. “Beloved René, Mama needs…” Not a plain request for supplies or a cosmetic treatment, but tiny vignettes filled with wit and self-irony. “Can you come tomorrow? Skin and soul could use some care.” René Koch still misses these messages to this day.
Today Sunday would have marked Hildegard Knef’s 100th birthday. As an actress, singer, and author, she shaped postwar Germany and remained stubbornly independent.
A woman with a smoky voice, clever lyrics, and eyes darkly made up. “When she wore the lashes, she was already a diva,” recalls her early makeup artist Koch. What fascinated him most was her humor. She did not let life’s adversities get her down.
With songs like “Für mich soll’s rote Rosen regnen,” “Im 80. Stockwerk,” and “Von nun an ging’s bergab,” Knef became a chanson icon. Her song “Berlin, dein Gesicht hat Sommersprossen” stands as an anthem to a city that is wonderfully complicated.
When the Scorpio struck
She was born on December 28, 1925, in Ulm. Knef shot Germany’s first postwar feature film, Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946), and after a failed attempt in Hollywood accepted the lead role in Die Sünderin (1951). The film included a nude scene and sparked a scandal because of its subject matter. She performed on Broadway, wrote her own lyrics, and found success as an author (“Der geschenkte Gaul”). She also painted. She endured illnesses, a dependence on prescription medications, and three marriages.
For Koch, she represented modernity, emancipation, and honesty—an honesty that sometimes hurt her, he says. For him there were two versions of her—the maternal Hilde and the diva who appeared in public. Knef was a quintessential Capricorn, says Koch, “ascendant Scorpio”—and “when that energy showed, she could sting.” Yet he managed to work well with her.
Her candor could also be seen in interviews. She spoke openly about failures and offered insightful observations, as can be seen in the documentary “Hildegard Knef – Ich will alles,” which ARD broadcasts.
“It’s simply a messy life”
When a television reporter tried to pin down a single characterization of her (she was allegedly “naive-trusting,” yet calculating, “rebelliously independent,” but in need of support), she retorted, “You’re turning me into 24 different people at once.” And she lit a cigarette.
Of course people go through many changes, Knef continued. Change and adaptability are the most constant things in our lives. “It’s simply a messy life.” That goes for every life, even when you try to organize it very neatly.
Happiness knows only minutes
When was she truly happy? “Well, truly happy? What is happiness?” answers Koch. Knef herself wrote: “Happiness knows only minutes; the rest is a waiting room.” If her daughter had been there, she would have been, like any mother, surely happy. The interesting thing about Knef was that she never complained. “She was a take-charge woman.”
“I laughed with her more than I cried,” says Koch, who today in a West Berlin apartment displays many mementos from their time together. If she ever had a bad day, he would pick her up with his duck and they would head to KaDeWe or to the hat shop.
Better a cigarette pack
If you wanted to give her a gift, you could make her happiest with three things. It wasn’t red roses, as fans had long believed, Koch explains. “No. A pack of Marlboro cigarettes, a bottle of champagne—Dom Pérignon—and a bowl of Russian caviar.” He would also bring her cosmetics or clothes.
As times and fashion changed, he once advised her to wear less makeup. She, however, wanted to keep the lashes—and in hindsight, that was a good call. “We still talk about the lashes today, and it was right that she didn’t remove them.”
The legendary artificial lashes
One pair of her lashes sits in a display case today. Back then, you couldn’t simply buy magnetic lashes at the drugstore or watch contouring tutorials on TikTok. He had to order the adhesive from Hollywood, explains Koch, who sometimes affectionately called Knef “Ida Putenschlund” when she lay wrinkled in bed.
He once lent her an earring and forgot to return it, Koch recalls. She wrote to him: “You have my golden earring. Not that I begrudge you borrowing it. But lend it back to me for one evening. Your Ida Putenschlund.” The two had known each other since the 1970s, more than two decades.
Knef died on February 1, 2002, at the age of 76. Her life was adapted into a film starring Heike Makatsch and told as a graphic novel. Did she expect that her mementos would one day be displayed by Koch? He believes she was a person who lived in the moment. “That was always the best thing for her—the moment.”
