Karin Hardt

Life

A merchant's daughter, Hardt first took private acting lessons with Alex Otto and received theatrical engagements in Mönchengladbach, Rheydt and Altenburg. In 1931 she made with Vater geht auf Reisen her film debut and was promoted in the coming years, quickly becoming a popular star. Among her best known films of the 1930s include Ein gewisser Herr Gran (1933), Barcarole (1935), The Roundabouts of Handsome Karl (1938) and Menschen vom Varieté (1939), where she was the naive blonde rival of La Jana. During the war years, the film roles became less frequent. She acted, among other things in Comrades (1941) and Via Mala (1945).

After the war only a few more film appearances followed such as the Queen in Fritz Genschow's fairytale Sleeping Beauty (1955), in addition to Horst Buchholz in Endstation Liebe (1957) and alongside Kirk Douglas in Town Without Pity (1961). Instead, she played mostly on the stage again, in cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Aachen and Cologne. From the 1960s, she increasingly received proposals from television. After appearances on TV shows like Bei uns zu Haus (1963), Der Forellenhof (1965), Die Unternehmungen des Herrn Hans (1976) and as a grandmother in Ein Jahr ohne Sonntag, and movies like Just a Gigolo (1979, directed by David Hemmings), she played from 1985 to 1986 the housekeeper Kati in the successful TV-series The Black Forest Clinic and in 1988 the mother of Robert Liebling in the ARD series Liebling Kreuzberg. In 1991 she stood for Mrs. Harris und der Heiratsschwindler on the side of Inge Meysel one last time before the camera. She also starred in the television series Die Wicherts von nebenan as the Countess of Strelenau.

In 1933, Hardt was married to director Erich Waschneck. Her second, later divorced, marriage was to Rolf von Goth. In 1983 she received an award for outstanding work in many years of German film. Her tomb is located in the cemetery in Wilmersdorf, anonymous burial.

Selected filmography