Jennifer Nitsch (†)
The tragic end of the “German Sharon Stone”
Jennifer Nitsch (†)
© Hogreve / imago images
20 years ago, the talented actress Jennifer Nitsch died after falling from her fourth-floor apartment in Munich. The “Shadow Man” actress was only lightly dressed and was holding a pair of jeans in her hand. Her death remains a mystery to this day. As an actress, she will never be forgotten.
“She left as she came: with one blow,” wrote the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” in its obituary for Jennifer Nitsch, †37. It is now 20 years since the actress with the distinctive smoky voice and profound, sad eyes died on June 13, 2004, shortly after 1 p.m., when she fell about twelve meters from the fourth floor of her attic apartment in the Munich district of Schwabing. She was said to have been only lightly dressed when she fell in broad daylight and had a pair of jeans in her hand. The actress died instantly. She broke her neck and suffered severe head injuries, according to subsequent investigations. Investigations also revealed that Nitsch had a blood alcohol level of 3.1 per mille at the time. She had come home after a night of partying and allegedly continued drinking alcohol at home before climbing onto the gutter.
The rise and fall of Jennifer Nitsch
It all began with a meteoric rise: Jennifer Nitsch appeared on TV screens out of nowhere in the early 1990s and won over audiences with her screen presence and smoky voice. She was born in Cologne in 1966 and trained as a costume designer before deciding to become an actress and appearing in her first small TV roles. She had her breakthrough as a skilled flatmate in the film “Allein unter Frauen”. In 1994, she was hired by director Dieter Wedel, †82, for his ZDF series “Der Schattenmann”, which was a huge success. In it she played alongside Stefan Kurt, 64, Mario Adorf, 93, Heiner Lauterbach, 71, and other stars.
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A blonde contrary to all clichés
She also worked with other directors such as Sönke Wortmann, 64. Her roles: those of strong, emancipated women who persistently go their own way. The cool blonde was soon dubbed the “German Sharon Stone” by the press. For her performance in “Just a Little Affair” she won the Bavarian Television Award and the Adolf Grimme Award. But she was not happy in her private life. She is said to have suffered from depression and auto-aggression. Friends reported alcohol and drug excesses.
Was her death a tragic accident, or was the actress, who was so strong on screen, broken by real life and so desperate that she deliberately jumped into the depths? The circumstances were never clearly established. Jennifer Nitsch was buried in the family grave in Sankt Peter-Ording on the North Sea.
Sources used: sueddeutsche.de, spiegel.de, faz.net