Trivia

She was convicted of the manslaughter of her partner Klaus Knaths at their home in West Germany on February 2, 1977. She was sentenced to seven years in Aichach women's prison in Bavaria. She was released two years early in 1982 for good behavior.

Mother of Andrea Sehnke and Carolin van Bergen.

Cool, blonde, smoky-voiced German leading actress, on stage 1953 in Munich with the Therese Angeloff Kabarett. On screen from 1954, often in emancipated, smart or erotic roles. Played anything from bar maids and prostitutes to models, revue girls and dancers. Often also cast as femmes fatale in crime dramas and thrillers.

The German dubbing voice for Lee Grant, Rita Moreno, Honor Blackman, Joan Blondell, Colleen Dewhurst, Shelley Winters and Diana Dors.

Briefly enjoyed success as a singer and released several albums, 1962-72.

She appeared in approximately 200 film and television productions, often playing roles such as a barmaid, unfaithful wife, or prostitute. Her greatest success came in 1959 in the post-war satire 'Rosen für den Staatsanwalt' (Roses for the Prosecutor) where she played boarding house owner Lissy Flemming.

Van Bergen performed cabaret with the Berlin cabaret group "Die Stachelschweine", filmed, among other things, Edgar Wallace adaptations and starred alongside Kirk Douglas in 1960 in the movie "Town Without Pity".

In 2009, van Bergen, aged 77, took part in the RTL show "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" and was chosen as the winner by the audience.

In 1977, van Bergen shot and killed her then-lover, financial broker Klaus Knaths. The trial caused a major sensation. Because she was deemed "heavily disinhibited by alcohol" and in a state of emotional distress at the time of the crime, she was convicted of manslaughter with diminished responsibility and sentenced to seven years in prison. Her career was thus interrupted.

Shortly before the end of World War II, she fled with her mother and siblings from the advancing Soviet troops. Later, she completed her secondary education, worked as a dancer on Hamburg's Reeperbahn, as an office assistant, and as a factory worker.

Her smoky voice became her trademark.

In 1953 she rediscovered her youthful passion: acting. She made it to film via cabaret and theatre.

Ingrid van Bergen was one of the most famous actresses in post-war Germany - and crowned herself the "Queen of the Jungle" in her old age.

After serving her sentence for manslaughter, van Bergen was initially unable to recapture her former success. She played supporting roles in crime and family series. Later, van Bergen dedicated herself to animal welfare and wrote her autobiography.

At the Karlsruhe Chamber Theatre in 2011, she could be admired as a cheerful senior citizen in the tragicomedy "Harold and Maude".

Her mother had been awarded the Mother's Cross for having four children. The death of her father as a soldier on the Eastern Front - he fell on June 22, 1941, the first day of Operation Barbarossa - made her a war orphan.

Ingrid van Bergen was one of the most prominent faces in German film and television from the 1950s onwards. She had her breakthrough in entertainment and adventure films of that era, in which she often portrayed strong, self-confident female characters. In the following decades, she appeared in numerous film and television productions, including crime dramas, dramas, and comedies.

In 2013, van Bergen joined the Mensch Umwelt Tierschutz party, and from 2020 onwards, she lived on her farm in a shared apartment with a friend from her time in prison.

She became a vegetarian in 2010 and wrote short stories from the point of view of animals.

In November 2025, the once-celebrated actress revealed to the "Bild" newspaper how poor her health was. "I can't see anything anymore. I'm blind.".

Her mother twice attempted to escape by sea during the Second World War - this time aiming for Copenhagen, because the German ports were blocked due to wrecked ships. Van Bergen described this situation: "I think we weren't afraid at all anymore. We were completely fatalistic...".

She experienced the end of the war on May 8, 1945, in a refugee camp in Skagen, which was taken over by the Danes that day. There, the family was provided with food and medical care until their return to Germany in 1948. Van Bergen attended school there with her brother. A pin, blindly placed on a map of the French occupation zone, determined the refugees' future home: Metzingen. From there, van Bergen regularly attended the Isolde-Kurz-Oberschule in Reutlingen and passed her Abitur (university entrance exam) there in 1950.

Her mother fled after the Soviet air raids on Danzig towards the end of World War II, initially traveling with her four children through Oliva and Langfuhr, then by small boat across the Vistula River into the Bay of Danzig, and finally on the Moltkefels, which was supposed to take her and 2,000 other people across the Baltic Sea to Rostock, Lübeck, or Hamburg. An attack by Soviet bombers off the Hel Peninsula damaged and ultimately sank the ship; approximately 500 people died. The family was rescued by a lifeboat and taken to the peninsula. There, van Bergen later recounted, she was raped by a Russian soldier when she was 13 years old; a traumatic experience she never told her mother about.

Ingrid van Bergen is also known for her role in the film Richy Guitar (1985), in which the German band Die Ärzte played an important role.

Van Bergen was involved with the Hitler Youth in a drama group and sang, for example, for soldiers on leave from the front, acted out fairy tales, or sang folk songs.

During the early 1960s, the blond-haired actress also appeared as a supporting role in a few international productions, playing a prostitute in Town Without Pity (1961) with Kirk Douglas and appearing in the war film The Counterfeit Traitor (1962) starring William Holden.

In an interview with Stern magazine in 2009, she stated that she was a practicing Buddhist.

In 2017, Van Bergen made a cameo appearance in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, the fifth film of the Sharknado film series.

In 1994, van Bergen moved to Mallorca, where she dedicated herself to animal welfare and housed over 100 animals on her finca. In 2001, she returned to Germany with her animals, to a farm in the village of Eyendorf in the Lüneburg Heath.

Her daughter Carolin van Bergen died on October 26, 1990, at only 26 years old, during a tissue removal operation due to heart failure.