Hartmut Becker, here in 2008.
(Photo: imago images/APress)
You knew his face. Even those who don’t turn on the television when watching “Traumschiff” or “SOKO Leipzig” will think: Oh, that one! Hartmut Becker. A tall man who remained slim until old age with the friendly intellectual face of a book person – high forehead, graying hair – and a distinctive deep voice, which he lent to the US actor Kris Kristofferson as a voice actor. Hartmut Becker was both: actor and homme de lettres. He had studied theater studies, German and philosophy in Berlin, wrote screenplays and several plays. However, he became known as an actor who has taken part in a hundred television and cinema productions with reliable sovereignty and a sonorous baritone.
Becker was born on May 6, 1938 in Berlin, where he studied at the Free University and trained as an actor with Else Bongers. He then had theater engagements in Braunschweig, Bielefeld, at the Munich Kammerspiele and for a long time at the Residenztheater, and in the 1980s at the Schiller and Renaissance Theaters in Berlin. He made his cinema debut in 1970 in Michael Verhoeven’s scandalous black and white film “ok”, in which the director had a crime committed by American soldiers in the Vietnam War (known as “Incident on Hill 192”) reenacted in a Bavarian forest with Brechtian alienation effects: the gang rape and murder of a Vietnamese girl in 1966. Becker then worked with Verhoeven more often, for example playing advertising manager Igor, who broke out of all conventions, alongside Senta Berger and Marianne Blomquist in the three-person film “Who in the Glass House Loves … Der Dig”. In it he propagates love for threesomes and wanders naked through downtown Vienna.
From the camp commandant to the self-righteous cardinal: a German actor’s life
Becker also took part in English-language productions, such as Richard Attenborough’s star-studded war film “The Bridge at Arnhem” (1977). One of his most famous roles is that of SS-Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner in the British television film Escape from Sobibor (1987), directed by Jack Gold and about the 1943 escape of Jewish prisoners from the Polish death camp Sobibor the “Butcher of Sobibor”, even nominated for an Emmy. He also acted in American and Italian productions, for example in Lina Wertmüller’s film drama “Heimlich, still and quietly” (1989).
In the last thirty years, however, Becker has mainly been seen on German television, filmed with Peter Patzak, Carlo Rola, Jeanine Meerapfel (“Der deutsche Freund” from 2012) and has appeared in many popular series. In Gerd Schneider’s 2015 feature film “Verfehlung”, in which a priest is accused of sexual abuse, he played the power-conscious, self-righteous cardinal who is determined to sweep the matter under the carpet.
Hartmut Becker died in Berlin on Saturday after a long illness with cancer. He was 83 years old.