Background
Hans H. Zerlett was the son of a musical director and the brother of the screenwriter Walter Zerlett-Olfenius.
Hans H. Zerlett was the son of a musical director and the brother of the screenwriter Walter Zerlett-Olfenius.
He initially worked as a theatre actor and served as a soldier in World War I, but had to leave military service early due to illness. After the war he gradually moved from acting to dramaturge in the author"s service and wrote revues, schlager lyrics and cabaret lyrics. He sold his first screenplay in 1927.
He made his directorial debut in 1934 with the Karl Valentin short film Im Schallplattenladen and the comedy Da stimmt was nicht, with Viktor de Kowa and Adele Sandrock.
Zerlett"s greatest success was the 1936 medical drama Arzt aus Leidenschaft and the 1938 revue film Es leuchten die Sterne, with Louisiana Jana. During the following years he also made propaganda films, such as the anti-Semitic 1939 musical Robert und Bertram and the anti-"Degenerate Art" Venus vor Gericht (1941).
In autumn 1938, however, he broke up with them after a heated argument about the threat of war. On 23 January 1946 he was tracked down in Bad Saarow by the Soviet secret service and interned.
He died of tuberculosis in 1949 in Soviet Special Camp 2, in the grounds of the former Buchenwald concentration camp.
He made 25 films under the Third Reich., becoming a key figure in Nazi cinema, a member of the Nazi Party and a close friend of the Nazi culture-politician Hans Hinkel.