gave in to pressure. Hansi Burg went to Switzerland and then to Great Britain in 1939, but they secretly remained a couple with him even managing to send her financial support. They were reunited after the war, when she returned to Germany in a British uniform. In 1943, Albers was paid a huge sum of money to star in UFA's big-budgeted anniversary picture Münchhausen but was careful not to give the impression that he was endorsing the National Socialist regime, which was indeed never asked of him. Also in 1943, Albers starred in another classic German film Große Freiheit Nr. 7 with actress Ilse Werner. Some of the scenes are said to have been shot in Prague because of bomb damage to Hamburg. The sailing ship Padua for the outdoor scenes of the film has survived under Soviet and Russian flag until this day as Kruzenshtern. After the Second World War After World War II Albers was affluent and, on account of his association with Hansi Burg, he avoided the financial plight and professional ban which many actors were facing at that time. Nevertheless, German "heroes" were considered undesirable by the occupation government that wanted to promote its own stars. This accounted for a major hiatus in his career and made him hard to cast. Eventually he found an opening with respectable wisdom-with-age type character parts, and enjoyed some public acclaim, but with these parts he never again enjoyed his huge stardom of the 1930s and early 1940s. By the early 1950s, his age was finally beginning to show and his powerful presence and freshness were almost wholly lost. His decline was exacerbated by his increasing alcoholism during the 1950s. Yet he remained active in movies until the very end. Death Hans Albers collapsed during a theater performance with massive internal bleeding and died three months later on 24 July 1960 at a sanatorium in Kempfenhausen near Lake Starnberg at the age of 68. He was cremated and subsequently buried at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg, the city of his birth. Legacy Albers' name will forever be closely associated with his hometown of Hamburg, in particular the district of St. Pauli where there is a square named Hans-Albers-Platz in his honour. Today he is probably better known for his music than his films; many of his songs remain familiar to young German people even today. Outside of Northern Europe, Albers