Hans Rosenthal

Hans Rosenthal
Rosenthal around 1970
Born	Hans Günter Rosenthal 2 April 1925 Berlin, Germany
Died	10 February 1987(1987-02-10) (aged 61) Berlin (West Berlin)
Cause of death	Stomach cancer
Occupation	Television host, director
Years active	1945–1986
Spouse(s)	Traudl Schallon (m. 1947)

Hans Rosenthal (2 April 1925 – 10 February 1987) was a radio editor, director, and one of the most popular German radio and television hosts of the 1970s and 1980s.

Rosenthal grew up in a Jewish family on Winsstraße No. 63, in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin. His childhood was marked by an aggressive antisemitic atmosphere, the result of rising German Nazism. His father died of kidney failure in 1937, after he had lost his job at Deutsche Bank AG. When his mother died of colorectal cancer in 1941, Hans and his younger brother Gert (born 1932) found themselves in the orphanage. Starting in 1940, Hans was forced to participate in unfree labour, while his brother was deported and like many other relatives died in the Holocaust. After Hans escaped the last deportation of German Jews (German: Fabrikaktion) in February 1943, he went into hiding and until 1945 was able to stay at a safe house in a small garden allotment in Berlin-Lichtenberg, where three German women helped him to survive.

After the war, Rosenthal began an apprenticeship as an assistant director at Berliner Rundfunk, a public broadcaster. However, he soon came into conflict with the supervisors of the Soviet Military Administration and from 1948 onwards worked for the Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (RIAS), a broadcaster controlled by the American occupying forces. He became chief entertainment editor and soon began hosting his own radio quiz shows: Allein gegen alle, Wer fragt, gewinnt., Das klingende Sonntagsrätsel, Spaß muß sein (broadcast from London's Paris Theatre during the 1966 FIFA World Cup), Opas Schlagerfestival, Da ist man sprachlos, Die Rückblende and Günter Neumann und seine Insulaner. Later on the German ZDF public television channel, he presented shows like Gut gefragt ist halb gewonnen, Rate mal mit Rosenthal, KO OK, Das Schlagerfestival der 20er Jahre, and Dalli Dalli, a co-production with ORF, an Austrian broadcaster.