Europe News
Peter Alexander, post-war icon in Germany, dead at 84
Feb 13, 2011, 0:26 GMT
Berlin/Vienna - Peter Alexander, an actor and singer who was an entertainment fixture in German-speaking Europe from the 1950s to the 1990s, died Saturday in Vienna at age 84, a spokeswoman said.
The Austrian appeared in some 50 movies, mostly in the 1950s and '60s, had a long string of hit songs into the 1970s and remained a staple of German television with his Peter Alexander Show until the mid-1990s.
Alexander recorded 120 albums and starred, hosted and made guest appearances on hundreds of television shows over the decades, keeping him on of post-war Germany's most recognizable and beloved entertainers.
He withdrew completely from public life for the last decade of his life, during which he suffered the death of his manager and wife of 51 years, Hilde, in 2003, and the death of his daughter, Susanne, in a car accident in 2009 in Thailand.
He was born Peter Alexander Ferdinand Maximilian Neumayer in 1926 in Vienna.
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