Michael Degen obit

Michael Degen died 

He was not on the list.

The actor and author Michael Degen is dead. The 90-year-old died on Saturday in Hamburg, the Rowohlt publishing house announced. Degen was recently best known for the ARD crime series “Donna Leon” .The actor Michael Degen has died. He was 90 years old and died on Saturday in Hamburg, as the Rowohlt publishing house in Berlin announced. Degen was most recently familiar to a large TV audience thanks to the ARD crime series “Donna Leon” . In it he embodied the vain “Vice-Questore Patta” for years. The artist had previously celebrated success in numerous classical, modern and entertaining roles on important stages as well as in film and television. He worked with great directors such as Peter Zadek, Claude Chabrol and Ingmar Bergman and also directed films himself.“We mourn and bow to a person and artist who touched and carried away with his warmth and enthusiasm, and whose diverse work will remain,” the publisher continued.

Son of a Jewish language professor

Degen - born in Chemnitz in 1932 - also distinguished himself as an author with books that were often autobiographical. In 1999, in his debut novel "Not everyone was a murderer. A childhood in Berlin," he wrote about his own experiences during the Nazi era. As the son of a Jewish language professor and businessman who died in 1940 after being imprisoned in a concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, young Michael was able to go into hiding in Berlin with his mother Anna. Both owed their lives to courageous friends and helpers. Israeli and German citizen Jo Baier filmed the story for the first in 2006. Degen emigrated to Israel in 1949, but returned after two years. Out of a longing to do theater in his native language, as he later said. He was an Israeli and German citizen throughout his life. The actor became known to a large TV audience in 1979 as Bendix Grünlich in Franz Peter Wirth's "The Buddenbrooks". 

He dealt with the Nazi past in, among other things, Egon Monk's "The Oppermann Siblings" (1983) and Michael Kehlmann's "Geheime Reichssache" (1987). But he also often appeared in lighter shows - from "Derrick" and "Klinik unter Palmen" to "Traumschiff" and "Rosamunde Pilcher".Steinmeier was impressed by Degen's lifeAn actor is always in danger of losing a sense of his own personality due to his empathy with many characters, Michael Degen once said in an interview with the dpa news agency. He was only able to save himself from this by temporarily accepting fewer offers and looking for other tasks such as writing. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier congratulated him on his 90th birthday on January 31st and was impressed by his life's path. "Your biography reflects the abyss of German history. Despite everything that was done to you and your family, you did not turn away from Germany," said the politician in Berlin.