“Tatort” legend Peter Sodann
The actor died at the age of 87
Actor Peter Sodann was known, among other things, for his role in “Tatort”.
© IMAGO/Andreas Weihs
Former “Tatort” star Peter Sodann is dead. As his family announced, he died on April 5th. He was 87 years old.
Mourning for actor, director and theater director Peter Sodann (1936-2024): How Among other things, Bild reported that his family announced that he died on April 5th in Halle an der Saale. Then he was 87 years old. He was one of the great East German actors and was best known for his role as Inspector Bruno Ehrlicher in the Dresden and Leipzig “Tatort”, which he played between 1992 and 2007.
He was the “Columbo of Dresden”
The role not only brought him nationwide fame, but also the nickname “Columbo of Dresden”. Together with Bernd Michael Lade (59), he was the first East German “crime scene” team that investigated first in Dresden and then in Leipzig.
Thenn was born in 1936 in Meißen, Saxony. He initially studied law, but then attended the theater school in Leipzig from 1959 onwards. His first theater engagement at the Berliner Ensemble followed in 1964. He started his film and TV career in the 1970s.
Sodann always caused a stir not only with his roles, but also with his opinions. In the GDR in the 1960s he was even arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison for “agitation that was a threat to the state” on the cabaret stage. He had to serve nine months of that. He was also expelled from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). “I don’t regret anything! After all, I didn’t kill anyone,” he told Bild. “There were always certain circumstances why I did something and I think I got through life pretty sensibly.”
He directed the “new theater” in Halle an der Saale for 25 years
Peter Sodann had lived in Halle an der Saale since 1980 and built the “new theater” there. He headed it until July 2005. Four years later, he drew attention to himself with his candidacy for the office of Federal President for the “Die Linke” party. “I only did that because I knew I wouldn’t be elected. I wanted to get to know this system,” he explained.
In addition to acting and politics, his particular interest was literature. Since 1990 he has collected more than three million books that were published in the GDR. These are in the “Peter Sodann Library” in Staucha, Saxony, which opened in May 2012. But what moved him most was private events, he revealed in an interview. “The birth of my four children and the fact that I met my second wife Conny.” He had been married to Cornelia Brenner-Sodann since 1995.