Schlager legend: Freddy Quinn tells the truth about his moving life

For decades, pop singer Freddy Quinn (93, “Boy, come again soon”) told his fans stories in his songs and films: of the lonely sailor who goes across the world’s oceans in search of fulfillment. This was well received by people in post -war Germany, where many had actually lost their homes through the turmoil of the Second World War. Quinn had admitted that it was only an image of the record industry and the Austrian native never drove to sea. In his new autobiography “How it really was”, which will be released on Thursday (May 22nd) at Hannibal Verlag, the pop singer clears up other myths that tend to be around his life.

It starts with his place of birth: three places are mentioned at Wikipedia: Vienna, Niederfladnitz or Pula in Croatia. “All of these contradictory information comes from me, sometimes journalists have wore together, sometimes false claims have become independent,” writes Quinn, who wrote his autobiography together with “Bild” editor Daniel Böcking.

In interviews, he himself was at some point in Vienna as a place of birth. His grandmother had a holiday home in Niederfladnitz, his stepfather, Rudolf Anatol von Petz, came from Pula. Vienna is a place of birth in his birth certificate, it is certain: his mother is the Austrian journalist Edith Nidl (1910-1978).

A wide variety of rumors are circulating about his father

On the other hand, a wide variety of rumors are circulating about his father, among other things, Quinn should be the illegitimate son of Irish merchant Johann Quinn. Later he was supposed to have moved to his father to the USA and attended a primary school in Morgantown (West Virginia). Quinn even traveled there with a ZDF camera team to visit the school. But all of these stories were fictitious to create an image, Quinn admits in the foreword: “I should be the loner who was driven by the unrest to find his father who lived in the United States.”

In truth, Freddy Quinn didn’t know his father. In his childhood he only knew about his father “that he had an affair with my mother and ran away when she was pregnant.” His true father was probably killed in 1965 by his son – Quinn’s half -brother -, Quinn suspects. However, he knows no evidence, but only indications.

The writer Manfred Chobot wrote in 2011 that the man who was killed by his son was Quinn’s father. In addition, his mother used the name of this man as a pseudonym during the war. “It is difficult for me to believe that all of this should be a coincidence,” writes Quinn.

Quinn was discovered in the “Washington Bar” on St. Pauli

It is true that Quinn was discovered in the “Washington Bar” on St. Pauli – the starting point of his extraordinary career. In the 1950s and 1960s, the singer booked numerous number one hits with the deep baritone voice: “Heimweh”, “The guitar and the sea” or “Junge, come again soon” became classics, followed by numerous music films in which he embodied a similar image.

As a lone fighter and swarm of women, Quinn broke the records of his time: he sold more than 60 million records by the turn of the millennium. His name fell in the same breath as that of Peter Alexander’s great show legends to Udo Jürgens.

But success also had its price: to fulfill the image of the lonely sailor that he had been put on, Freddy Quinn had to follow clear rules – one of them was: no women at his side. So his long-time partner Lilli Blessmann (1918-2008), whom he had already met as a young man in the “Washington Bar”, only appeared in public only as his manager. Today Freddy Quinn lives with the Rosi, 17 years younger, which he married in May 2023 and with whom he has lived in the country near Hamburg for a year. The 93-year-old says about her: “She is the greatest luck that I could happen to me.”