Freddy Quinn

Freddy Quinn (born Franz Eugen Helmut Manfred Nidl; 27 September 1931) is a former Austrian singer and actor whose popularity in the German-speaking world soared in the late 1950s and 1960s. As Hans Albers had done two generations before him, Quinn adopted the persona of the rootless wanderer who goes to sea but longs for a home, family and friends. Quinn's Irish family name comes from his Irish-born salesman father, Johann Quinn. His mother, Edith Henriette Nidl, was an Austrian journalist. He is often associated with the Schlager scene.

Biography

Quinn was born in Niederfladnitz, Lower Austria, and grew up in Vienna. As a child he lived in Morgantown, West Virginia, with his father, but moved back to live with his mother in Vienna. Through his mother's second marriage to Rudolf Anatol Freiherr von Petz, Quinn adopted the name Nidl-Petz.

At the end of World War II, as part of a refugee group, Quinn encountered American troops in Bohemia. Due to his fluent English, the 14-year-old succeeded in pretending to be of American nationality. He was subsequently sent to the US in May 1945 with a military transport. On Ellis Island, he learned that his father had already died in 1943 in a car accident. The boy was immediately sent back to Europe and, before returning to his mother in Vienna, was stranded for a whole year in Antwerp in a children's home, where he learned to speak French and Dutch.