Karin Hardt Meta Therese (28 April 1910 in
Altona, Hamburg – 5 March 1992 in
Berlin) was a German actress.
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.