Forever young assistant, almost forever intriguing mayor: for the 80th of the actor Fritz Wepper.
In view of the long history of the German television crime thriller, it is easy to overlook the fact that the series “Der Kommissar” starring Erik Ode is a child of the conflict phase in the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition to the murder cases, which had to be cleared up by the Munich police station, socio-political issues were negotiated that breathed the zeitgeist of 1968. Sometimes the so-called bums (with the young Thomas Fritsch as a hippie) were identified in the milieu, and repeatedly it was about “free love” and prostitution. Fritz Wepper alias Harry Klein was the young colleague who was open to social problems, a mediator for Erik Ode, the man from the old world.
Fritz Wepper played the assistant in “Kommissar” a total of 71 times, then changed to a similar role together with the character of Harry Klein, as a partner of Horst Tappert in “Derrick”. At the end of this endless series, there were 281 episodes in which Harry Klein often fetched the car, but did not even hear the sentence: “Harry, get the car”. Nevertheless, the phrase turned into a cult phrase, Fritz Wepper had lost his role ascribing forever, even though he was touched by the breeze of a world career almost at the same time.
At Liza Minnelli’s side
At the side of Michael York, Helmut Griem, Liza Minnelli and Marisa Berenson, Fritz Wepper succeeded in 1972 in Bob Fosses Berlin drama “Cabaret”, the film about the musical that Liza Minnelli had shaped in such a unique way with charm and expressiveness. The personal friendship between Minnelli and Wepper has lasted over the decades, but it was only enough for ambitious cinema, in 1983 in Luc Besson’s science fiction film “The Last Fight”.
The rise in the German actor elite happened much earlier, in 1959, through Bernhard Wicki’s anti-war film “Die Brücke”. As later, when Wolfgang Petersen’s “Das Boot” became the initiation experience of a young generation of actors, “Die Brücke” also formed a shared experience for Günther Pfitzmann, Volker Lechtenbrink and – not to forget – Vicco von Bülow alias Loriot as Sergeant Zeisler.
When Wepper was later often seen in Pauker films, supporting roles in crime novels and many comedies, this always happened with the self-confidence that he had brought the new German cinema on the way before it was called that.
Fritz Wepper, who in the meantime was passionately involved in the publicly largely insignificant trotting sport and was even traded there as the founding president of a racing club, is someone with a lot of staying power. His 20th anniversary as mayor of the fictional town of Kaltenthal in the series “Um Himmels Willen” was barely denied to him, in June she was hired after 19 years. It is one of the most successful on German television and is a home-made Bavarian version of the classic Italian love-hate relationship between Don Camillo and Peppone.
Most recently, news of health setbacks reached the public, for example, Fritz Wepper was diagnosed with skin cancer in February 2021. Today the eternally young assistant to the great German commissioners is 80 years old.
