The Kessler twins Alice and Ellen at the “Die Liebe Geld” theater premiere in Munich in March 2022. The show legends were 89 years old.
Alice and Ellen Kessler were born on August 20, 1936 in Nerchau, Saxony.
1965: The Kessler twins on August 2, 1965 in London. The entertainers were known for their singing, dancing and acting in Germany and Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. They were known as the “Kessler twins”.
1957: “The Count of Luxembourg” with the Kessler twins and Gerhard Riedmann as the Count of Luxembourg. The twins played the dancers Fritzi and Franzi.
Alice and Ellen Kessler in a show costume. The picture was taken in 1959.
“Lieben Sie Show” was a TV format from ARD from 1962.
With TV legend Rudi Carrell in the format “Die verflixte 7”. The show with Carrell ran from 1965 to 1973.
Alice (left) and Ellen Kessler with presenter Frank Elstner at the press event for the TV show “Deutschland spielt auf – zum 50. Geburtstag der ARD-Fernsehlotterie” in 2006.
The Kessler twins have died
The Kessler twins Alice and Ellen at the “Die Liebe Geld” theater premiere in Munich in March 2022. The show legends were 89 years old.
Alice and Ellen Kessler were born on August 20, 1936 in Nerchau, Saxony.
1965: The Kessler twins on August 2, 1965 in London. The entertainers were known for their singing, dancing and acting in Germany and Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. They were known as the “Kessler twins”.
1957: “The Count of Luxembourg” with the Kessler twins and Gerhard Riedmann as the Count of Luxembourg. The twins played the dancers Fritzi and Franzi.
Alice and Ellen Kessler in a show costume. The picture was taken in 1959.
“Lieben Sie Show” was a TV format from ARD from 1962.
With TV legend Rudi Carrell in the format “Die verflixte 7”. The show with Carrell ran from 1965 to 1973.
Alice (left) and Ellen Kessler with presenter Frank Elstner at the press event for the TV show “Deutschland spielt auf – zum 50. Geburtstag der ARD-Fernsehlotterie” in 2006.
Alice and Ellen Kessler, world-famous as the Kessler twins, left their mark on post-war entertainment like few others. Now they have died on the same day at the age of 89.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Alice and Ellen Kessler were born in Saxony in 1936 and grew up in a violent home. An experience that brought them close together.
- Their career path took them from the children’s ballet of the Leipzig Opera via Düsseldorf to the Paris Lido, where their international breakthrough came in 1955.
- The twins became Europe-wide show stars, performed with Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte and Fred Astaire and represented Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1959.
- Their simultaneous deaths marked the symbolic finale of a unique double career.
Alice and Ellen Kessler were born in 1936 in Nerchau near Leipzig in Saxony, in the middle of a Germany in upheaval. They later became famous as actresses, dancers and entertainers. Their journey began early and under tough conditions.
Even as little girls, their father pushed the twins into the limelight. He was a man of power who skillfully marketed his daughters and sent them to ballet at an early age. At the age of six, the girls became part of the Leipzig Opera’s children’s ballet company.
Difficult parental home
Behind the stage discipline, however, was a dark family life. Their father was violent: “He came home drunk almost every night and argued with our mother – even getting violent,” the sisters later recounted. “Domestic violence was a daily topic. Our father was a drunk.”
As children, they sought comfort from their mother and made escape fantasies. “When we grew up, we would throw dad down the stairs, take you by the hand and run away.”
The nights together, when their father woke them up and they encouraged each other in bed, “welded us sisters together”, they said looking back. They had “developed great toughness and strength” from his irascibility.
Career start in Paris
After their first engagements in the GDR, the family fled to the West. In Düsseldorf, the twins quickly made contact with the theater world and received their first permanent engagement as teenagers, as dancers in the “Palladium” revue theater.
There it became clear that their synchronized style was striking, professional and precise.
The Kessler sisters also danced in Paris – here is an undated archive photo from a dance class.
INP Halioua/dpa
This did not go undetected. The director of the legendary Paris Lido took notice of the young Germans and hired them. In 1955, the Kessler twins stood in the spotlight on the Champs-Élysées.
A global career in a double act
Paris was their breakthrough. At the time, the blond, tall, disciplined and elegant twins were a perfect match for the fantasies of French nightlife. They were said to have brought “German diligence” to the revue. At the same time, they were regarded as the “man’s dream made flesh” of the 50s and 60s.
With this mixture, the Kesslers became the “most famous show stars in Europe”. German television broadcasters were keen to get their hands on the pair, who were soon regular guests on the big Saturday evening shows with Caterina Valente, Peter Alexander and many others.
The performance that anchored them in the collective memory followed in 1959: they represented Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest with “Heute Abend wollen wir tanzen geh’n”. The audience loved them.
Italy also discovered the twins. They appeared on TV shows, made films, released records and lived on the Lido di Venezia for years. In the 60s, they moved to Rome. Their greatest success was the musical “Viola violino viola d’amore”, said Alice. “Nobody thought we could do it. And then it became a huge success.”
Two-body myth and modern pop culture
What made the Kessler twins stand out was also their dual nature: two people who sometimes looked like a single body on stage. Their unity became their trademark.
The sisters made guest appearances in New York, Las Vegas, Sydney, Hong Kong and Monte Carlo. Their stage partners included greats such as Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte and Fred Astaire. Sinatra was “very polite” because they “left him alone”, Alice later said.
Elvis Presley also wanted the two of them for “Viva Las Vegas”. They declined for fear of being confined to music films in Hollywood. A decision they later smiled about. They met Presley anyway. “He was very uptight,” they recalled.
In 1975, “Playboy” photographed the then 40-year-old twins. They appeared in films, stood in front of the camera for magazines and recorded a series of records.
Independence as a life goal
Alice Kessler once explained in an interview: “There was something that was much more important to us than beauty: independence!” She and her sister consistently adhered to this. “We never made ourselves dependent on men.”
The twins remained unmarried, had no children and consciously chose a self-determined life. They never regretted these decisions: “We lived our lives to the full,” said Alice Kessler. And their childlessness was no coincidence either. “We never wanted to be mothers.”
From 1986, they lived together in a house in the Munich celebrity suburb of Grünwald, each with their own space, separated by a sliding door.
A double death as the final point
Alice and Ellen Kessler survived show business almost without scandal. Shortly before their 80th birthday in August 2016, the sisters were once again in “interview stress”, as they reported. They appeared in Berlin, Munich and Vienna in the musical “I’ve Never Been to New York”, taking turns in the role. The hustle and bustle was nice, but exhausting. “We’ll be glad when things calm down again,” they said.
In interviews, they repeatedly emphasized that they had never seriously considered performing separately. Their lives worked in unison: one complemented the other, both on stage and in everyday life.
In an interview in 2024, the twins revealed that they wanted to bequeath their fortune to various charitable organizations one day. After their death, they said, they would like to be buried in an urn with their mother and their poodle. Alice and Ellen Kessler were on stage together for 70 years, and left it together.
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