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From Köln to Bel Air
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Werner Rudolf Klemperer was born 22 March, 1920 to the soprano Johanna née Geisler and the conductor Otto Klemperer, in Köln (Cologne) in the Weimar Republik. "Weimar Republik" was the name of the bold experiment in self-transformation by which Germany was then known. Otto Klemperer was the name of one of its leading transforming forces. (more...) LA is the place best designed to cause culture shock in anyone not from there. But for 15-yr.-old Werner, who was greeted at the station with his sister and mother by a chauffeur-driven limosine and whisked away to a home in Bel-Air, "it was like fairyland." (more...) He'd been told only that he'd be reading for the part of the commandant of a POW camp. Klemperer was stunned when he saw the script. Perhaps out of concern that this serious actor would reject such a part, no one had said anything about comedy. (more...)
By the time Hogan's Heroes ended in 1971, Klemperer had made his mark so distinctively as to emerge forever from the shadow of his famous great conductor father. From now on, the cultural icon which would overshadow his career and by which he would be defined would be the one of his own creation: Colonel Wilhelm Klink. (more...)
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