The Berlin landlord Kostas Papanastasiou, who was called Panaiotis Sarikakis on Lindenstrasse, died at the age of 84.
Whenever the route with non-Berliners leads to the area around Savignyplatz, a reference to the Mondo is mandatory. The Greek actor and bon vivant Kostas Papanastasiou ran the legendary restaurant on Grolmannstrasse there with heart and soul, which in the 1970s had become a popular meeting place for the left-wing scene in West Berlin. Kostas, whom everyone only called by his first name, and who showed a certain resemblance to the chansonnier Georges Moustaki – whose songs he also sang – became a charismatic host over the years. A role that Hans W. Geißendörfer copied one-to-one for his TV series “Lindenstrasse”, but the location moved from Berlin to Munich.
Kostas Papanastasiou, in the series: Panaiotis Sarikakis, became the intellectual center of “Lindenstrasse”, together with the clochard Harry (Harry Rowohlt) he contributed to the ongoing success of the series, which not least proved that good television entertainment needs types whose script was written through life.
In 2011, on the occasion of his arrival in Berlin 55 years earlier, Kostas Papanastasiou gave a concert in the chamber music hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. As an actor, in addition to his engagement in the “Lindenstrasse”, he appeared in two films by Bernhard Wicki: “The Conquest of the Citadel” and “ The spider web”.
But role changes were not his thing. He stayed Kostas, especially when he complained about anti-Greek sentiment in Germany in connection with the Greek sovereign debt crisis. In 2012 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. He died on Sunday at the age of 84.
