The actor Michael Degen is dead. He died on Saturday in Hamburg at the age of 90, as the Rowohlt publishing house in Berlin announced on Tuesday. “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,” it said.
Degen was recently familiar to a large TV audience, mainly thanks to the ARD crime series “Donna Leon”. In it he embodied the “Vice Questore Patta” for years. The artist had previously enjoyed success in numerous classical, modern and entertaining roles on major stages, as well as in film and television. He worked with director greats such as Peter Zadek (1926-2009), Claude Chabrol (1930-2010) and Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) and also directed films himself. Degen and his wife Susanne Sturm have four children.
Michael Degen wrote about his experiences during the Nazi era
Degen, born in Chemnitz in 1932, also distinguished himself as an author with books that were often autobiographical. So he wrote in 1999 in his debut «Not all were murderers. A childhood in Berlin” about personal experiences during the Nazi era. As the son of a Jewish language professor and businessman who died in 1940 after being imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, young Michael was able to go into hiding with his mother Anna in Berlin.
Both owed their lives to courageous friends and helpers. Jo Baier (73) filmed the story for the first time in 2006. Degen emigrated to Israel in 1949 but returned two years later. Out of a longing to play theater in his mother tongue, as he later said. He was then an Israeli and German citizen throughout his life.
From thrillers to the «Dream Ship»
The actor became known to a large TV audience in 1979 as Bendix Grünlich in Franz Peter Wirth’s “Die Buddenbrooks”. He dealt with the Nazi past in, among other things, Egon Monk’s “The Oppermann Sisters” (1983) and Michael Kehlmann’s “Secret Reich Matters” (1987). He often appeared in lighter programs – from “Derrick” and “Klinik unter Palmen” to “Traumschiff” and “Rosamunde Pilcher”. (SDA/bsn)