Werner Klemperer (March 22, 1920 – December 6, 2000) was an American actor. He was best known for playing Colonel Wilhelm Klink on the CBS television sitcom Hogan's Heroes, for which he twice won the award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series at the Primetime Emmy Awards in 1968 and 1969.
Klemperer served in the United States Army during World War II, then began performing on the Broadway stage in 1947. He appeared in several films during his early acting career, such as The Wrong Man (1956), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and Houseboat (1958), and he had numerous roles on television shows such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1956), Perry Mason (1957), Maverick (1957), Gunsmoke (1958), The Untouchables (1960), and Have Gun – Will Travel (1961), prior to his Hogan's Heroes role.
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Early life
Klemperer was born in Cologne, Germany, to a musical family, but he said that he had little musical aptitude. His father was renowned orchestra conductor Otto Klemperer and his mother was soprano Johanna Geisler. He had a younger sister named Lotte (1923–2003). His father was Jewish by birth; he converted to Catholicism but later returned to Judaism. His mother was Lutheran. His grandfather was part of the Jewish community in Prague, and his grandmother was a Sephardic Jew from Hamburg, Germany. Otto Klemperer was a first cousin of Victor Klemperer.
