Jürgen Ohlsen

Jürgen Ohlsen (15 March 1917 – 23 September 1994) was a German actor best remembered for portraying "Heini "Quex" Völker" in the 1933 Nazi propaganda film Hitlerjunge Quex (Our Flag Leads Us Forward).

Career

Ohlsen was born in Schöneberg, Berlin, Germany on 15 March 1917. Due to the illness of actor Hermann Braun, Ohlsen inherited the uncredited role of Heini Völker (nicknamed 'Quex') in Hitlerjunge Quex (Our Flag Leads Us Forward, 1933). Units of the Berlin Hitler Youth also joined the cast of the film. Ohlsen later took the role of a supporter of aviator Ernst Udet in Heinz Paul's Wunder des Fliegens (Wonder of Flying. 1935).

Ohlsen joined the Hitler Youth in 1934 when the Nazis dissolved Berlin's Der Jungenbund Südlegion, of which he was a member. He appears not to have taken the Party's anti-Semitic position seriously for he was disciplined for repeatedly playing tennis with a Jew. Ohlsen was alleged to be gay and by at least the fall of 1938, following the release of Hitlerjunge Quex, the verb "quexen" (literally "to quex") had entered the Hitler Youth vocabulary as a euphemism for gay sex. It was said that Ohlsen was the lover of Baldur von Schirach, the Reichsjugendführer (Reich Youth Führer), leader of the Hitler Youth. Von Schirach was replaced in 1940 by Artur Axmann, perhaps in part due to these allegations.

Later years and death

No longer the cherubic man-child of his Quex years, by 1940 Ohlsen had disappeared from the public eye. According to a report by the Osnabrück Gestapo, Ohlsen was supposed to be sent to a concentration camp during 1940 or 1941 where he was to be killed. On 23 September 1994, Ohlsen died at the age of 77 in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Sources

• Baird, Jay W. (1992). To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon. Indiana University Press.a ISBN 9780253207579.
• Buscher, Paulus (1998) Das Stigma. Koblenz ISBN 978-3926584014
• Chiari, Bernhard, Matthias Rogg, and Wolfgang Schmidt, eds. Krieg und Militär im Film des 20. Jahrhunderts. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3486567160
• Hergemöller, Bernd-Ulrich (2001), Mann für Mann–Ein biographisches Lexikon (in German), Hamburg: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, ISBN 3-518-39766-4
• "Perfect Youth: Irks Nazis By Associating With Jew." New York Times, August 23, 1935, p. 9. (Subscription only)
• Rentschler, Eric (1993) Emotional engineering: Hitler youth Quex. Center for German and European Studies, University of California,
• Rentschler, Eric (1996) The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ISBN 978-0674576407
• Steinwascher, Gerd, ed. Gestapo Osnabrück meldet--: Polizei- und Regierungsberichte aus dem Regierungsbezirk Osnabrück aus den Jahren 1933 bis 1936. Osnabrück, Germany: Selbstverlag des Vereins für Geschichte und Landeskunde von Osnabrück, 1995, p. 267, Entry No. 29. ISBN 3980341232
• Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 95.