Status: 04/12/2022 2:42 p.m
The actor and author Michael Degen is dead. The 90-year-old died in Hamburg on Saturday, the Rowohlt publishing house announced. Degen was most recently mainly due to the “Donna Leon” crime series ARD famous.
The actor Michael Degen has died. He was 90 years old and died on Saturday in Hamburg, as the Rowohlt publishing house in Berlin announced. Degen was a large TV audience, mainly thanks to the “Donna Leon” crime series ARD trusted. In it he embodied the vain “Vice-Questore Patta” for years. The artist had previously enjoyed success in numerous classical, modern and entertaining roles on major stages, as well as in film and television. He has worked with great directors such as Peter Zadek, Claude Chabrol and Ingmar Bergman and also directed films himself.
“We mourn and bow to a person and artist who touched and carried away with his warmth and enthusiasm, and whose diverse work will remain,” the publisher said.
Son of a Jewish language professor
Degen – born in Chemnitz in 1932 – had also distinguished himself as an author with books that were often autobiographical. In 1999 he wrote about his own experiences during the Nazi era in his debut “Not All Were Murderers. A Childhood in Berlin”. As the son of a Jewish language professor and businessman who died in 1940 after being imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, young Michael was able to go into hiding with his mother Anna in Berlin. Both owed their lives to courageous friends and helpers.
Israeli and German citizen
Jo Baier filmed the story for the first time in 2006. Degen emigrated to Israel in 1949 but returned two years later. Out of a longing to play theater in his mother tongue, as he later said. He was then an Israeli and German citizen throughout his life.
The actor became known to a large TV audience in 1979 as Bendix Grünlich in Franz Peter Wirth’s “Die Buddenbrooks”. He dealt with the Nazi past in, among other things, Egon Monk’s “The Oppermann Sisters” (1983) and Michael Kehlmann’s “Secret Reich Matters” (1987). However, he often appeared in lighter programs – from “Derrick” and “Klinik unter Palmen” to “Traumschiff” and “Rosamunde Pilcher”.
Steinmeier impressed by Degen’s life
An actor is always in danger of losing his sense of his own personality through his empathy with many role characters, Michael Degen once said in an interview with the dpa news agency. He himself was only able to save himself from this by temporarily accepting fewer offers and looking for other tasks such as writing.
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier congratulated him on his 90th birthday on January 31 and was impressed by his life. “Your biography reflects the abyss of German history. Despite everything that was done to you and your family, you did not turn away from Germany,” said the politician in Berlin.