The Hessian star director Dieter Wedel is dead. The court proceedings against him are discontinued.
Munich – The German director Dieter Wedel is dead. He died on July 13 in Hamburg, as the Munich I district court announced on Wednesday (July 20), where criminal proceedings for rape against Wedel were pending. The court actually wanted to announce on Wednesday whether there would be a trial against Wedel. According to the court, the case against him is now being discontinued.
The public prosecutor had accused Wedel in March of last year of an allegation from 1996. The actress Jany Tempel states that Wedel raped her in a luxury hotel in Munich. Wedel denied the accusation.
Dieter Wedel is dead: proceedings against the German star director are discontinued
When the charges were brought, Wedel’s lawyers spoke of prior conviction and emphasized the likelihood that the charges could not be admitted at all – although that hardly ever occurs in the German judiciary.
The lawyer for the joint plaintiff Tempel, on the other hand, only recently complained about the delay in the proceedings against the director. “More than 14 months have passed since the indictment,” lawyer Alexander Stevens wrote in mid-May in a complaint of delay to the court. Tempel is suffering “very much from the length of the proceedings.” She even went on a brief hunger strike to protest that the court had taken so long to make the decision. Even before the public prosecutor’s office even filed charges, they had been investigating for three years.
Died at the age of 82: Dieter Wedel grew up in Bad Nauheim
Wedel was one of the most successful German filmmakers. With his multi-part series, he delighted an audience of millions and wrote television history.
There is conflicting information about the director’s date of birth. According to the district court of Munich, Wedel was born on November 12, 1939, reports the Hessenschau . At the time of his death he was 82 years old. Wedel was born in Frankfurt am Main and grew up in Bad Nauheim in the Wetteraukreis.
Mourning for Dieter Wedel: He was director of the Bad Hersfeld Festival until 2018
His career took off in the 1990s. One success followed the next: “The Great Bellheim” (1993), “The Shadow Man” (1996), “The King of St. Pauli” (1998) and “The Semmeling Affair” (2002). When the storyteller brought out his latest work, people spoke of the “new wedel” with a mixture of awe and curiosity. That sounded like a seal of approval – and it often turned out to be true.
Before the allegations against Wedel became known as part of the #MeToo debate, he was director of the Bad Hersfeld Festival. At the open-air theater festival, the doctorate in theater studies set audience records and ensured that many celebrities walked the red carpet at the opening. Things were turbulent in Wedel’s private life. He has six children from six women, a son with Hannelore Elsner, who died in 2019. (sne/dpa)
