A portrait of Freddy Quinn: The "boy from St. Pauli" was never a sailor

With over 60 million records sold, the Austrian Freddy Quinn is one of the most successful hit stars in the German-speaking world. The “boy from St. Pauli” is best known for his sea shanties like “La Paloma” or “Homesickness”, but he was also able to prove himself as an actor on the theater stage. Here you will learn interesting information about the career and life of Freddy Quinn.

Freddy Quinn profile: real name and age

Bourgeois name: Franz Eugen Helmuth Manfred Nidl
Profession: Singer, actor, presenter
Born on the: September 27, 1931 in Vienna (Austria)
Alter: 91
Star sign: Protect

Young Freddy Quinn grew up in the USA and Austria

Born in Vienna, Freddy Quinn spent according to the Biography of the Living Museum some years of his childhood with his father in Morgantown, West Virginia (USA). After he came back to his mother in Vienna, he was adopted by her new husband, as he revealed in an interview with ARDtold. Freddy Quinn and his stepfather had a difficult relationship, the singer reported in the Documentary “Legends”: “He was a nobleman without money and took advantage of my mother”.

According to his own statements, Freddy Quinn came to him during the Second World War ARD in the course of sending children to Hungary. At the age of 14, he fell into the hands of the American crew, who then took him to the United States. There, Freddy Quinn learned that his father had died in a car accident in 1943. “I never had a huge attachment figure in my parents because I was either with my mom for a few years, or with my dad for a few years, or then with my stepdad,” Freddy Quinn said on ARD-Interview.

Back in Vienna, Freddy Quinn attended high school as a teenager. However, he was not really successful in school, as he thought ARD reported: “I had big problems, I admit it”. It was around this time that Freddy Quinn decided to join a circus. “I ran away from school, from high school, with a real, real little traveling circus,” recalled the singer on “Magical home” in an interview with Gunther Emmerlich.

Said traveling circus was the Elkins Circus, who were looking for a saxophone player. However, since Freddy Quinn did not master this instrument, he quickly learned to play two songs on the saxophone. “I was so scared of auditioning,” the singer recalled in his documentary. But in the end he didn’t have to audition at all and was hired straight away.

In the 1950s, Freddy Quinn moved to Hamburg, where he first appeared as a singer in bars. He was finally discovered by Jürgen Roland and Werner Baecker in the “Washington Bar” in St. Pauli and began to produce records in the following years. Freddy Quinn was very successful with his sea shanties: According to the Living Museum, the song “Homesickness” brought him his first gold record.

The boy from St. Pauli: His favorite city is Hamburg

From the late 1950s, Freddy Quinn released several records and was thus able to further establish himself as a successful singer. “Homeless” (1958), “The Guitar and the Sea” (1959) and “La Paloma” (1961) were just a few of his EP releases from this period. The “boy from St. Pauli”, as Freddy Quinn was often called, chose the city where his music career took off as his adopted home, as he explained in an interview with the WDR said: “I always feel drawn back to Hamburg”.

In addition to his career as a singer, Freddy Quinn also worked as an actor. He has appeared in several films, including the lead role in The Guitar and the Sea, which won the Bambi in the Best Picture category. He also slipped into different roles on stage: He took part in musicals such as “Homesickness for St. Pauli” and “Große Freiheit Nr. 7”. But his singing career overshadowed his successes in acting, as Freddy Quinn admitted with a smile on “Magic Homeland”: “Something terrible came up: I had success with the record and with the singing”.

The role of the sailor was particularly authentic for Freddy Quinn during his acting career, although he never practiced the profession in real life: “I was an artist, I was a magician, I was an acrobat, I was a singer, an actor, an entertainer, a presenter… That only thing I’ve never been: I’ve never been a sailor,” said Freddy Quinn in an interview with Gunther Emmerlich.