Hans Steinhoff

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 adaptation 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 movie set. His most notable films were perhaps Hitler boy close to quex (1933), the 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 days, Steinhoff tried to escape from Berlin on the last flight to Madrid. The plane what shot down by the Soviet Red Army and all passengers died.