Dr. Dressler from “Lindenstrasse”: The actor Ludwig Haas has died.
Ludwig Haas had his first acting engagements in the mid-1960s in the now almost forgotten television format “You write with”. In it, games about family, work and everyday life were shown, which broke off after just under half an hour and were to be continued by the TV audience. A form of participatory television that is open to experimentation. “You write with” did not correspond to the ideas of consumer-oriented entertainment, for which there were of course dozens of counterexamples at the time. It was not until the 1990s that similar formats were reissued, focusing on spontaneity and situationist solutions.
Ludwig Haas, born in 1933 in Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein, was successful in other series and took over some parts in “Tatort” before he found the role of his life from 1985, which he filled for 34 years and through which it had a lasting impact on the German television landscape . Ludwig Haas became Dr. Ludwig Dressler from “Lindenstrasse”, the same first name made identification easier.
Ludwig Haas was one of the few successful actors who, in the public perception, almost completely merged with their series character, similar to their “Lindenstrasse” colleagues Marie-Luise Marjan (mother Beimer) and Annemarie Wendl (Else Kling).
Dr. Dressler, the doctor in a wheelchair, was the moral backbone of the people from “Lindenstrasse”, a kind of personified superego whose practice was not only sought out for medical assistance. Ludwig Dressler also became a fatherly friend, an advisor for all life situations of his often desperate play partners, whom he led out of the tight spots into which the script had driven them. Later, however, it was often about the friend’s own passions of classical music.
Iconographic feature
His star role had initially started quite conventionally, he only became a doctor in a wheelchair in 1989 after a TV car accident, which initially kept the series character’s state of health in suspense for some time. Eventually, however, the stroke of fate developed for Dr. Dressler also became an iconographic feature. Ludwig Haas was one of the first actors on German television to address severe physical disabilities. From today’s perspective, driven by the discussions about identity politics, the role of Dr. Dressier than “cripping up” problematized because Haas, as an actor without a handicap, plays a character with a handicap.
Ludwig Haas took note of the serial death two years ago with great regret. He told a pharmacy magazine in 2019: “It is bitter that such a format, which is unique, is simply being discontinued.” The last episode of “Lindenstrasse” was broadcast in March 2020. Ludwig Haas died on Tuesday at the age of 88 as a result of a medical procedure.
