Hans Steinhoff - Overview

Hans Steinhoff (10 March 1882, Marienberg – 20 April 1945) was a German film director, best known for the propaganda films he made in the Nazi era. Steinhoff started his career as a stage actor in the 1900s and later worked as a stage director. He directed his first silent film Clothes Make the Man, the adaption of a novel by Gottfried Keller, in 1921. Steinhoff was a convinced Nazi and directed many propaganda films, he sometimes even wore his Nazi party membership button on the film set. His most notable films were perhaps Hitlerjunge Quex (1933), an influential propaganda film for the Hitler Youth, and Ohm Krüger (1940), for which he won the Mussolini Cup at the 1941 Venice Film Festival. On April 20, 1945, during the last war days, Steinhoff tried to escape from Berlin on the last flight to Madrid. The plane was shot down by the Soviet Red Army and all passengers died.