page_title: List of Hogan's Heroes characters
section_title: Colonel Klink
hierarchical_section_title: List of Hogan's Heroes characters / Main / Colonel Klink
caption_attribution_description: Cropped photo of Werner Klemperer as Colonel Klink from the sitcom Hogan's Heroes.
context_page_description: The following is a list of characters from Hogan's Heroes, an American sitcom television series which starred Bob Crane, Werner Klemperer and John Banner, and featured Robert Clary, Richard Dawson, Ivan Dixon, and Larry Hovis. It ran for six seasons on CBS from September 17, 1965, to April 4, 1971.
context_section_description: Colonel Wilhelm Klink (portrayed by Werner Klemperer) – Kommandant Oberst (Colonel) Wilhelm Klink is an old-line Luftwaffe officer of aristocratic (Junker) Prussian descent. He is shown to be inept, a bit dimwitted, cowardly, arrogantly confident, vain, childish, and often clueless and rather gullible. He is a veteran aviator of the First World War and can be seen wearing an Iron Cross First Class, along with the 1939 clasp for a second award (spange), Ground Assault Badge of the Luftwaffe, and the Pilot's Badge. The former implies that he also earned both an Iron Cross Second Class as well as the Honor Cross for service in World War I.
  After failing his entrance exams for law or medical school, he received an appointment to a military academy and graduated 95th in his class. Stuck at the rank of colonel for twenty years with an efficiency rating a few points above "miserable", he is the only member of his class still in uniform who has not become a general. Klink always wears a monocle on his left eye, usually carries a riding crop, and walks with a stoop. Klink is for the most part portrayed as a vain, muddling, and incompetent career officer rather than as an evil German or ardent Nazi. Klink is easily manipulated by Hogan through a combination of flattery, chicanery, and playing on Klink's fear of being sent to the Russian Front or being arrested by the Gestapo.
  Klemperer reprised his role as Colonel Klink outside of the series twice: once on the 1960s Batman series in a cameo role and in a 1993 episode of The Simpsons.
caption: Werner Klemperer as Col. Klink
exif: {}