Berlin honours Dietrich on her 100th birthday

Berlin today honoured film legend Marlene Dietrich on what would have been her 100th birthday.

She was born in the city but shunned it for much of her life after turning her back on Nazi Germany.

Wreaths from President Johannes Rau and the city government were laid in a ceremony at Dietrich’s grave in the Friedenau cemetery in the German capital, where she was born Maria Magdalene von Losch in 1901. Rau sent a message stressing her commitment to ‘‘democracy and freedom in Germany’’ during the Nazi era.

The Berlin mayor’s chief of staff marked the anniversary by asking forgiveness for a hostile reception Dietrich received in 1960, reflecting bitterness at the star’s support for the Allies during the Second World War and her failure to return home after the war.

Bomb threats, picket signs reading Marlene Go Home and editorials calling her a traitor led the actress to swear she would never return to Germany.

For more than 40 years, Dietrich entranced film, theatre and night-club audiences with roles ranging from the cool temptress Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel to the hot-tempered Wild West saloon queen, Frenchy, in Destry Rides Again.

‘‘She was, one can say without exaggeration, Germany’s first international star,’’ said Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Dietrich died in Paris in 1992 and was buried in Berlin next to the grave of her mother. But, aside from a brief visit to bury her mother in 1945, Dietrich only returned to Germany for the turbulent 1960 concert tour.

Her reception then ‘‘belongs to the dark chapters of postwar German history,’’ Schroeder said.

‘‘Marlene Dietrich - and she stressed it herself - never fought against ‘the Germans’ but against a criminal regime in Germany.’’