At the age of 90: actor Michael Degen died

Culture At 90 years old

“We mourn and bow down” – actor Michael Degen died

Stand: 12.04.2022| Reading time: 2 minutes

Actor Michael Degen at the premiere of the film “Hannah Arendt” 2013 in Essen

Quelle: picture alliance / dpa

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Michael Degen became famous with roles such as “Vice-Questore Patta” in the ARD crime series “Donna Leon”. The actor died in Hamburg at the age of 90. This was announced by the Rowohlt publishing house in Berlin on Tuesday.

Dhe actor Michael Degen is dead. The 90-year-old died on Saturday in Hamburg, as the Rowohlt publishing house announced on Tuesday in Berlin. Degen was recently familiar to a large TV audience, mainly thanks to the ARD crime series “Donna Leon”. In it he embodied the vain “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 has 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 multifaceted work will remain,” the publisher said.

Degen, born in Chemnitz in 1932, also distinguished himself as an author with books that were often autobiographical. In his 1999 debut, he wrote, “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.

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Both owed their lives to courageous friends and helpers. Jo Baier 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.

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 Matter (1987). But he also frequently appeared in lighter shows – from “Derrick” and “Klinik unter Palmen” to “Traumschiff” and “Rosamunde Pilcher”.