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Sirk left Germany in 1937 because of his political leanings and his Jewish (second) wife, actress Hilde Jary. Still in Europe he worked on films in Switzerland and the Netherlands. On arrival in the United States, he soon changed his German birth name to Douglas Sirk.
Jan 17, 1987 · Douglas Sirk, the Danish-born director who amassed a considerable reputation in German films of the 1930s but was forced to flee the Nazi regime because of his leftist leanings and come to...
When his contract with Columbia ended, Sirk returned briefly to Germany. By 1950 he was back in the United States, where he produced and directed The First Legion (1951), starring Charles Boyer, before signing with Universal, for which he continued to make films until he retired nearly a decade later.
- Michael Barson
Apr 26, 2021 · One of many filmmaking émigrés who fled from Europe to California at the beginning of the Second World War, the German-born Sirk parted ways with his homeland after a brief and begrudging stint in Nazi-controlled UFA. Appropriately enough, his American debut was entitled Hitler’s Madman (1943).
We also learn why Sirk (aka Detlef Sierck, until his emigration to America) failed to leave Germany until 1937: he had a son, Claus Detlef, whom he hoped to get out. His first wife, Claus’ mother, had become a Nazi—in reaction, Sirk thought, to his remarriage to a Jew; because his second wife was Jewish, his ex was able to get a court order ...
Jul 22, 2005 · And when he fled Germany, Sirk had to leave his son behind. Toward the end of the war Claus was drafted, sent to the Russian front, and reported missing in action. After the war Sirk came back to Germany, and searched in vain for traces of the son he had left behind.
By James Harvey in the July-August 1978 Issue. Sirk’s extraordinary life has been marked by two abrupt and dramatic departures—at just those moments of dreamlike success that would have prompted most people to try to settle in where they were forever. The first flight was from Hitler Germany—in December 1937—just as Sirk (himself 37 ...
