Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CULTURE

Eight American celebrities with surprising German roots

While they may have found fame in the English-speaking world, many celebrities have roots elsewhere. Here are eight household names whose ties to Germany may surprise you.

Published: 23 September 2020 11:29 CEST
Updated: 24 September 2020 15:14 CEST
Eight American celebrities with surprising German roots
Many celebrities have German roots, and some can even speak the language. Photos: DPA/EPA/AP

Sandra Bullock 

Bullock speaks fluent German and has dual US-German citizenship. Photo: DPA

Sandra Bullock is more widely known for her Academy Award win in The Blind Side and further nominations, as well as a successful producing career. 

Few, however, know that she is the daughter of Helga Mathilde Meyer, an opera singer and voice coach from Germany who married John W. Bullock, an army employee from Alabama.

The two met when Bullock’s father was stationed in Nuremberg, where Bullock would live between stints in Vienna and Salzburg, Austria, for the first twelve years of her life. 

She speaks fluent German, but has been reluctant to give a longer German-language interview due to her allegedly bad grammar.

Bullock’s cousin, Susanne, is now married to Peter Ramsauer, a prominent politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU sister party. 

The German connection doesn’t stop there though: she also applied for dual US-German citizenship in 2009 along with her sister.

Billy Joel

Billy is open about his German roots and has performed several times in the country. Photo: EPA/Hayden Roger

The famous singer may have been born and raised in New York, but his father and grandparents are originally from Nuremberg, Germany. 

His grandfather, Karl Amson Joel, was a successful textile merchant of Jewish descent. Increasingly hostile anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany forced him to sell his business at a fraction of the value and escape with his family to Switzerland. 

They later emigrated to the United States via Cuba, where his son Howard Joel met his wife and had a child, Billy, in 1949. 

Howard later divorced his wife and returned to Europe, where he settled in Vienna, Austria and remarried. His second son, Alexander (Billy’s half brother) is now a famous classical conductor in Europe and speaks fluent German. 

A documentary on Joel's family history can be found here.

Bruce Willis 

Much like Bullock, Willis' parents met while his father was stationed in Germany. Photo: EPA

‘Die Hard’ Star Bruce Willis is a Hollywood icon in the States, but he was actually born in the West German town of Idar-Oberstein in Rhineland-Palatinate.

His American father met his German mother whilst he was stationed in Germany as a soldier, and Bruce spent the first two years of his life in the country. 

Although German is technically his mother tongue, he admits that his skills in the language are practically non-existent as he moved to the US before he could talk. 

Forty eight years later, however, he returned to his roots, turning up outside the door to his childhood home (much to the surprise of its current owners) and asking to take photos of the rooms inside.

Nicole Simpson

Simpson only lived in Germany for the early years of her life. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Nicole Brown Simpson was married to former professional NFL player O.J. Simpson, and her murder in June 1994 resulted in a controversial and widely publicised trial. 

She was born in Frankfurt in 1959. Her German mother Juditha and American father Louis met while he was stationed in the US as a correspondent for the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

The family lived in Frankfurt for the first years of Nicole’s life before later relocating to the US.

Meryl Streep

Streep learned to speak some German for her award winning performance in Sophie's Choice. Photo: ANSA/DPA

Hailed by many as the greatest actress of her time, record Academy award-winning Meryl Streep has some clear links to Germany.

Her father was of German and Swiss-German descent. Streep’s great-great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, immigrated from Loffenau, Baden-Württemberg, to the United States. The surname ‘Streeb’ was later changed to ‘Streep’. Her mother is also of partly German heritage.

In 1978, Streep travelled to both Germany and Austria to film the 1978 miniseries Holocaust, in which she played the German wife of a Jewish artist in Nazi Germany.

 

Streep later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as a Polish immigrant in Sophie’s Choice (1982). She speaks German in the film as well as Polish and English.

In 2012, Streep was awarded the coveted Golden Bear lifetime achievement prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

READ ALSO: Meryl Streep wins Golden Bear for life work

Donald Trump

Trump denied his links to Germany for many decades. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP/DPA

US president Donald Trump’s links to Germany have been shrouded in some controversy. 

His grandfather, Friedrich Trump, immigrated to the United States in 1885 when he was just 16 to escape compulsory military service.

He later attempted to return to Germany with the money he had earned, but he was stripped of his German citizenship for avoiding military service and forced to remain in the States. 

There, he married a woman from his hometown Kallstadt and had three children. The middle child, Fred Trump, is Donald Trump’s father. 

President Trump denied his German roots for most of his career, insisting in his book “The Art of the Deal” that his grandfather came from Sweden. 

According to his cousin John Walter, Trump kept his German heritage secret for the sake of his father, a realtor who wanted to avoid upsetting his Jewish clients. 

Doris Day

Day anglicised her German surname as it was deemed to be too long. Photo: PA Wire/DPA

American cultural icon Doris Day was actually born as Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff. 

Although she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, her grandparents on both sides were German. Her paternal grandfather, Franz Joseph Wilhelm Kappelhoff, came as an immigrant to the US in the late 19th century.

When Doris was 17, she was advised to adopt the stage surname ‘Day’ to help advance her career, as it was felt that Kappelhoff was simply too long. 

Kirsten Dunst 

Dunst dreams of being able to star in a German film one day. Photo: DPA

American movie star Kirsten Dunst doesn’t just have German roots – as of 2011, she officially has dual German and American citizenship. 

Although the actress was born in New Jersey, her father Klaus Dunst comes from Hamburg.

She attained German citizenship to make filming in Europe easier, and enjoys spending time in the country’s capital, Berlin. 

Dunst admits that she can only speak German “at a child’s level”, but hopes that one day she can go back to her roots by starring in a German language film.

 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

SHOW COMMENTS