Editing Douglas Sirk (section)

==Life and work==
===Early life and career in Germany===
Sirk was born Hans Detlef Sierck on 26 April 1897, in Hamburg, of Danish parentage;<ref>{{cite book|title=501 Movie Directors|editor-first=Steven Jay|editor-last=Schneider|publisher=Cassell Illustrated|location=London|year=2007|pages=92–93|isbn=9781844035731|oclc=1347156402}}</ref> his father was a newspaper reporter. He spent a few years in Denmark as a child, before his parents returned to Germany and became citizens. Sirk discovered the theatre in his mid-teens, particularly Shakespeare's history plays, and also began to frequent the cinema, where he first encountered what he later described as "dramas of swollen emotions"; one of his early screen favourites was Danish-born actress [[Asta Nielsen]]. In 1919, he enrolled to study law at [[Munich University]], but he left Munich following the violent collapse of a short-lived [[Bavarian Soviet Republic]]. Between stints at university, he began writing for his father's newspaper, not long before his father became a school principal.<ref name="Douglas Sirk 2011">Jon Halliday and Douglas Sirk, ''Sirk on Sirk'' (Faber & Faber, 2011)</ref>

Sirk continued his studies for a time at the [[University of Jena]] before transferring to [[Hamburg University]], where he switched to philosophy and the history of art. It was here that he attended a lecture on relativity given by [[Albert Einstein]]. A major influence in this period was art historian [[Erwin Panofsky]] - Sirk was a select member of Panofsky's seminar group for a semester and wrote a large essay for him on the relationship between Medieval German painting and the mystery plays; in his 1971 interview with Halliday, Sirk declared, "I owe Panofsky a lot." To support himself while studying, Sirk began working as a second-line ''dramaturg'' at the [[Deutsches Schauspielhaus]] in Hamburg. In 1922, substituting for a director who had fallen sick, Sirk directed his first production, the [[:de:Hermann Boßdorf|Hermann Bossdorf]] play ''Bahnmeister Tod'' ("Stationmaster Death"), which became a surprise success, and from that point Sirk was (in his own words) "lost to the theatre".<ref name="Douglas Sirk 2011"/> In addition to the theatre, Sirk worked in many areas of the arts during this formative period - he painted, took a summer job as a set-designer at a Berlin film studio, published his own German translation of Shakespeare's sonnets, translated some of Shakespeare's plays, and published writings of his own.

Schauspielhaus manager Dr Paul Eger offered Sirk a pay raise and the chance to present "one of those crazy modern [i.e. [[Expressionism (theatre)|Expressionist]] ] plays" but Sirk declared that he only wanted to direct "the classics" and took up an offer to become first director at a playhouse in [[Chemnitz]] in Saxony. The post proved to be a baptism of fire for the new director - although the company started out with classic works by [[Molière]], [[Georg Büchner|Büchner]] and [[Strindberg]], the season was disrupted when the theatre's main financier and manager gave up and vanished overnight, forcing the cast and crew to form a collective to keep the theatre going, and the program soon changed to comedies and [[Melodrama (film genre)|melodramas]] - "things that made money". Although Sirk later recalled the period as "a pretty terrible time", it was here that he learned his craft, and how to handle actors in "the ''most'' strained circumstances".  This was during the period of runaway [[Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic|inflation]] in Germany, and Sirk remembered that after distributing money to the company, they would have to run to the bank with their takings just before midday, because at 12&nbsp;pm the banks would close their shutters and post the new dollar rate - "... if you got in too late, you had just a small percentage left of what you had earned ..."<ref name="Douglas Sirk 2011"/>

With his first wife the actress Lydia Brincken Sirk fathered one son, [[Klaus Detlef Sierck]] (1925–1944), born on 30 March 1925 in Berlin-[[Charlottenburg]], Germany. His ex-wife joined the Nazi party and because of Sirk's remarriage to a Jewish woman was able to [[Nuremberg Laws|legally]] bar him from seeing their son, who became one of the leading child actors of Nazi Germany,<ref name="OUP">{{cite web|last1=Schiebel|first1=Will|title=Revisiting Douglas Sirk's A Time to Love and a Time to Die|url=https://blog.oup.com/2017/04/douglas-sirk-a-time-to-love-and-a-time-to-die/|website=OUPblog|publisher=Oxford University Press|access-date=30 April 2017|date=30 April 2017}}</ref> known for ''Die Saat geht auf'' (1935), ''Streit um den Knaben Jo'' (1937) and  ''Kopf hoch, Johannes!'' (1941). He died as a soldier of the [[Panzer-Grenadier-Division Großdeutschland]] on 22 May 1944<ref>Claus Detlev Sierck gefallen. Film-Kurier, No. 45, 6 June 1944</ref> near Novoaleksandrovka, Kirovograd Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, USSR (now Novooleksandrivka, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine).

By the 1930s Sirk had become one of Germany's leading stage directors, with a list of credits that included a production of Brecht's ''[[The Threepenny Opera]]''. Sirk joined [[Universum Film AG|UFA]] (Universum Film AG) studios in 1934, where he directed three shorts, followed by his first feature, ''[[April, April! (1935 film)|April, April]]'' (1935), which was filmed in both German and Dutch versions. His exotic [[melodrama film]]s ''[[Zu neuen Ufern]]'' and ''[[La Habanera (film)|La Habanera]]'' made a star of the Nazi cinema out of Swedish singer [[Zarah Leander]].

===Career in the U.S.===
[[File:All That Heaven Allows 1955 set photo (Hudson, Wyman, Sirk, Moorehead).jpg|thumb|Sirk and actors on the set of ''[[All That Heaven Allows]]'' (1955). Left to right: [[Rock Hudson]], [[Jane Wyman]], Sirk, and [[Agnes Moorehead]]]]
Sirk left Germany in 1937 because of his political leanings and his Jewish (second) wife, actress Hilde Jary. Still in Europe he worked on films in Switzerland and the Netherlands. On arrival in the United States, he soon changed his German birth name to Douglas Sirk. By 1942, he was under contract to [[Columbia Pictures]] and directing the stridently anti-Nazi ''[[Hitler's Madman]]'' for [[Seymour Nebenzal]], the legendary producer of [[Nero-Film]], for whom Sirk also directed ''[[Summer Storm (1944 film)|Summer Storm]]'' (1944).

Sirk briefly returned to Germany after the war ended, but returned to the U.S. and established his reputation with a series of lush, colorful melodramas for [[Universal Pictures|Universal-International Pictures]] from 1952 to 1959: ''[[Magnificent Obsession (1954 film)|Magnificent Obsession]]'' (1954), ''[[All That Heaven Allows]]'' (1955), ''[[Written on the Wind]]'' (1956), ''[[Battle Hymn (film)|Battle Hymn]]'' (1957), ''[[The Tarnished Angels]]'' (1957), ''[[A Time to Love and a Time to Die]]'' (1958), and ''[[Imitation of Life (1959 film)|Imitation of Life]]'' (1959).

Despite the enormous success of ''Imitation of Life'' in 1959 (partially fueled by the scandal surrounding the murder of [[Lana Turner]]'s boyfriend by her daughter), Sirk left the United States and retired from filmmaking. He died in Lugano, Switzerland, nearly 30 years later, with only a brief return behind the camera in [[West Germany]] in the 1970s, teaching at the film school [[University of Television and Film Munich|Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film]] in Munich.