The popular actor Ralf Wolter, known from Karl May films, has died.
Anyone who was able to say the name Hajji Halef Omar ben Hajji Abul Abbas Ibn Hajji Dawuhd al Gossarah in his younger years without any accidents signaled that he wanted to belong – to whatever. The oriental-looking singsong was the full name of an accompanist of the Karl May character Old Shatterhand, another of those mythical-literary figures that recently came under suspicion of cultural appropriation.
Hadji Halef Omar, influenced by Ralf Wolter, and his Sam Hawkens were jokers, sidekicks whose task in the “Winnetou” films was not least to break the threatening pathos of men and blood brothers. Ralf Wolter, who was born in Berlin in 1926, must have thought what else can a short bald man do but refine his own ordinariness into a caricature. The actor has died at the age of 95.
In the almost seventy years of his acting career, Ralf Wolter has managed the feat of making the supporting character the main task of his screen presence. Hundreds of short appearances were his business, in this way he took part in dozens of classics of film history, for example as a Russian agent in Billy Wilder’s Berlin comedy “Eins, Zwei, Drei” or in the Wolfgang Neuss films “Das Wirtshaus im Spessart”. , “We basement children” and “We prodigies”.
Ralf Wolter was an ageless jack of all trades of German 1950s cinema, about which Kurt Scheel, the editor of the magazine “Merkur” once said: “If the 1968 revolt hadn’t come, there would have been a revolt among moviegoers.”
“If I’m not mistaken, hihihi.”
