Since the end of the 1940s Fritz Rémond had been developing the Kleines Theater am Zoo in Frankfurt into a highly respected theater. I went to see him. He told me he could only use me if I could speak a less refined kind of German. He thought I would be hard to sell to the German audience in Frankfurt, which was quite a conservative city. But in the end he was the one who supported me after the first attempts and regularly gave me parts for which skin color wasn't obviously relevant. In the years when I was acting there I met many men and women who would go on to make major careers, like Herta Worell, Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff or Sybille Schmitz, whom I had met in Rome. I also met Ralf Wolter, who played Sam Hawkens in the later Karl May films, as well as Uwe Dallmeier, whom I had acted with in Giessen and who died quite young, and Käthe Jaenicke, whom I also knew from Giessen and whom I admired so much that Friedel got jealous – for no reason, of course. In the dressing room I shared a makeup table with a good-looking actor of about my own age who was always well dressed; I was very impressed by his elegance. That was Bo Gobert, later the manager of the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and the Burgtheater in Vienna. That was an important apprenticeship in the Kleines Theater am Zoo, and it left me with unforgettable memories.

Fritz Rémond, a brilliant director, knew how to deploy his actors so that they achieved outstanding performances even when the casting was unconventional by the standards of the time. He always treated me fairly and with respect. I remember one occasion when I had to be called by telegram to the first rehearsal of a particular play because I didn't have a telephone. I had just enough money to pay the fare from Butzbach to Frankfurt, but not enough to get back. Friedel had given me the last pennies that were in fact intended for the household.