The actor, singer and director Volker Lechtenbrink is dead. He died on Monday with his family as a result of a serious illness, as his agency and the Ernst-Deutsch-Theater in Hamburg announced. Lechtenbrink was 77 years old.
Born in Cranz / East Prussia, Lechtenbrink grew up in Bremen and Hamburg. At the age of eight he took on speaking roles in the NDR children’s radio and celebrated his breakthrough only six years later when he played one of the seven boys in Bernhard Wicki’s anti-war film “Die Brücke” (1959) who senselessly had to defend a bridge shortly before the end of the war. After working at theaters in Hanover, Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Hamburg, he also played in television series such as Derrick and A case for two with
In the 1970s Lechtenbrink started his career as a musician and moderator (Live the way I like it). At the age of 26 he had already played around 60 stage and 50 television roles. “I played everything: from murderers to lovers, from criminals to comedians,” he told the dpa on his 70th birthday. Lechtenbrink also became known for its unmistakably sonorous voice: Among other things, he was the German dubbing voice of Kris Kristofferson and Burt Reynolds. In 1995 he also took on the job of artistic director at the Bad Hersfeld Festival, and in 2004 he took over the management of the Ernst-Deutsch-Theater in Hamburg for three years.