text: Nastassja Kinski praises sister for reporting sex abuse 
   
   Nastassja Kinski is seen here in 1993 
   
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   The actress Nastassja Kinski has praised her half-sister Pola for her courage in reporting that their late father Klaus abused her as a child. 
   
   Pola said she had been abused between the ages of five and 19 by the actor, who died in 1991 after a career making some of Germany's most notable films. 
   
   Nastassja was quoted by Bild newspaper as saying she was "deeply shocked" by the revelations. 
   
   But she was proud, she added, that Pola had found the strength to speak out. 
   
   The elder sister, 60, made the revelations in an interview published by Stern magazine on Thursday, ahead of the publication of her autobiography. 
   
   Klaus Kinski acted in spaghetti westerns before starring in films by director Werner Herzog which included Aguirre The Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). 
   
   Revered by many for his film work long after his death, he was also famous for his numerous sexual liaisons with adults. 
   
   'Heroine' 
   
   Klaus Kinski died in 1991 
   
   "My sister is a heroine, because she has freed her heart, her soul and also her future from the weight of the secret," Nastassja Kinski said. 
   
   "This is a difficult moment for me. I am on my sister's side, I support her. I am deeply shocked." 
   
   The actress, 51, whose films include Roman Polanski's Tess and Paris Texas by Wim Wenders, said she had read Pola's words and wept. 
   
   Pola's book Kindermund, she argued, would help "all the children, adolescents and mothers who fear their father and swallow this fear to hide it in the depths of their souls". 
   
   Pola Kinski, herself an actress, spoke to Stern ahead of the release of her autobiography. 
   
   She said she had decided to speak out about the abuse because of the continuing adulation for her father. 
   
   "The terrible thing is that he once told me that it was completely natural, that fathers all over the world did that with their daughters," she said. 
   
   "He was paying for me to be his little sex object, placed on silk cushions." 
   
   A biographer of Klaus Kinski, Christian David, told BBC News there had been rumours about the relationship between the actor and Pola for years before this week's revelations. ||||| Two questions are enough to reveal the deep complexity of German actor Klaus Kinski's appeal: Why are we so fascinated with him? And why are we simultaneously so repelled? 
   
   The answer to both questions is the same. It was his madness, his not always successful tightrope walk between sanity and lunacy. And it is an answer that remains unchanged even after his daughter's disturbing interview this week, in which she said he had sexually abused her. 
   
   The first reaction to the news was a visceral one: Will it ever be possible to enjoy being a Kinski fan again? Or is it even possible to continue being a Kinski fan at all? Still, given Kinski's unique genius for providing an unobstructed glimpse into his disturbed soul, the confirmation of evil somehow fit seamlessly into our overall image of him. 
   
   It is an image that began with his voice. In his famous German language recitation of Frenchman François Villon's poetry, it pulsates and erupts with emotion; he needs but a breath to move from violence to tenderness. And both were part of his schizophrenic personality. To hear it is to accept that the voice's owner must be borderline insane. Or a genius. Or an insane genius, which is how we prefer our geniuses to be. 
   
   It is obvious to viewers of Kinski's most important films that this madness is not acted, but a state that he could easily cross into. The films he made with Werner Herzog were particularly bleak journeys, and not just into the lost biographies of his heroes, all of whom were diabolical characters. They were also trips into the soul of his tortured lead actor -- and that is what gave his works such power. 
   
   Tormented by an Egomaniac 
   
   In "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," Kinski was the conquistador who drove his men into death, leaving just the monkeys of the jungle at the end. In "Fitzcarraldo," he plays a wraithlike adventurer who wants to build an opera house in the heart of the wilderness. In "Nosferatu," he portrayed a deceitfully innocent-looking vampire who robbed souls. In "Cobra Verde," he was a slaveholder and child molester. It was only in "Woyzeck" that Kinski failed. The original figure was an underling at the mercy of others -- and that is a role that Kinski was unable to play. Klaus Kinski, after all, only ever played himself. 
   
   Nobody knew that better than director Werner Herzog. Indeed, it would be interesting to know how he feels about the allegations of abuse levelled against him by his daughter. Because Herzog belongs to that group of people who, in their own way, were all tormented somehow by the egomaniac Kinski, who died in 1991. As a 13-year-old, Herzog shared an apartment with Kinski for three months, when the young actor "from the very first moment terrorized everyone" with his fits of rage, Herzog said. Just how traumatic this experience must have been for the sensitive youth who went on to become a filmmaker is depicted in the documentary "My Best Fiend." 
   
   Herzog got to know Kinski as a wild-eyed madman, which is exactly how he cast him in his films. The result was a series of masterpieces bristling with the kind of megalomaniacal power that the world hasn't seen since. Had Kinski made comedies, they would have been eternally destroyed by his daughter's revelations. But, horrifyingly, the films he made with Herzog survive. Even worse, the evil within them has become more genuine, retroactively authenticated by the depravity of their lead actor. There is a difference between playing a role involving incest and actually living it out as Kinski has been accused of doing. It is the difference between being an artist and being a criminal. 
   
   It had always been clear to enthralled audiences, as they watched Kinski dance on the precipice of lunacy, that they wouldn't be able to stand the man for even five minutes in real life. His daughter, however, was left at the mercy of this crazy genius. Three years ago, her younger sister Nastassja Kinski said in an interview: "He hurt us so badly. It is good that some people don't remain in this world for longer." Her sister Pola has now provided the background for that verdict. He was probably the monstrous psychopath that we always thought he was. In the Friday edition of the tabloid Bild, Nastassja describes her sister as a "hero" for coming forward with the accusations. 
   
   Horribly Unbearable 
   
   Kinski didn't even try to hide his mindset. His comments in a 1977 talk show -- displaying as always his disregard for God, the world and societal morals -- are legendary. "Here, you land in prison for sleeping with a 12-year-old girl; in the Orient, they marry at age 11. Isn't that absurd?" he said to approving laughter from the audience. 
   
   It is exactly this deification that Pola Kinski has courageously contradicted. It is courageous because she is not only taking on her father, but also his adoring fans. Are we accomplices because we interpreted his unveiled criminal cravings as art? 
   
   For "My Best Fiend," Herzog traveled to sites where the movies he made with Kinski were filmed. He presented outtakes and archival material and showed the physical and psychological violence his lead actor exhibited on the set. "He would scream at me for hours, two inches away from my face," Herzog says in the film. But he also noted that "he was also very loving with me then and would kiss me and hold me and could also be very emotional and very moving." Herzog reached the conclusion that working with insanity had made him crazy -- or complicit -- as well. His therapeutic documentary ends with the weak claim that their joint derangement must have converged to create great art. 
   
   "My Best Fiend" ends with a conciliatory scene of unexpected gentleness -- a scene that, in light of the new revelations, is horribly unbearable. An enthralled, laughing Kinski is playing with a butterfly that is fluttering about. Herzog says with feeling: "Then I see him with a butterfly, softly, delicately. The little creature doesn't want to leave him, and is so unafraid. Sometimes it seems to me that Klaus himself turns into a butterfly. Everything that weighed on us is gone. And even though my mind revolts against it, something deep inside tells me this is the way I'd like to keep him in my memory." 
   
   That, however, is no longer possible. And perhaps it's better that way.
target: – The daughter of madman actor Klaus Kinski says he raped her repeatedly throughout her youth and showed not a shred of remorse, Der Spiegel reports. Pola Kinski, now 60, says the star of Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God "flouted everything—even the fact that I often resisted and said, 'I don't want to.' He didn't care. He simply took what he wanted." The BBC reports that she describes herself as "his little sex object" from ages 5 to 19. "The terrible thing is that he once told me that it was completely natural, that fathers all over the world did that with their daughters." Pola's sister Nastassja Kinski said she is "deeply shocked" by her sister's story: "My sister is a heroine, because she has freed her heart, her soul and also her future from the weight of the secret." But an op-ed piece in Der Spiegel argues that Klaus Kinski's "alleged depravity" has only authenticated the "evil that he oozed on the silver screen." Writes Arno Frank: "They were also trips into the soul of his tortured lead actor—and that is what gave his works such power." Pola Kinski, also an actor, made the revelations in advance of her upcoming memoir Kindermund, or Child's Mouth. Her father died in 1991, at age 65, of a heart attack.