Fritz Wepper saw himself as blessed by luck. “I’m a Sunday child,” he stated a few years ago. Anyone who met the actor could indeed experience a cheerful person who could talk and chat in a charming and entertaining way. Despite many blows of fate, the Munich native maintained his optimism, also because he always knew his younger brother Elmar was at his side. Their childhood had brought them together and awakened the same passion in them – acting. Now both are dead. Fritz Wepper also died around five months after Elmar, on Monday at the age of 82, as his lawyer and good friend Norman Synek announced.
Wepper’s childhood was full of deprivation. His father was reported missing in Russia in 1944 during World War II. The mother raised Fritz and her brother Elmar, who was almost three years younger, alone. But it wasn’t sad. His mother was very cultured and taught them to laugh. “I learned from my mother and my grandmother not to take things so seriously,” Wepper once said. One of her pleasures: playing with the Punch and Judy show. He also liked to talk about adventures with other children in bombed-out post-war Munich, where they climbed over rubble and explored everything.
Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as role models
One of Wepper’s favorite heroes on the screen was a duo who appeared with self-irony and a lot of humor: Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, known from comedies such as “The Lucky Guy” or “An Odd Couple”. He was also taken with the Munich comedian Karl Valentin early on and aroused his enthusiasm for film and theater, as well as the entertaining and philosophical film series “Don Camillo and Peppone”.
The young actors stand together during the filming of the film “Die Brücke” (above, 1958) and below at a meeting in the Upper Palatinate in 1965: Fritz Wepper (from left to right), Günther Hoffmann, Frank Glaubrecht, Karl-Michael Balzer, Folker Bohnet and Volker Lechtenbrink . Photo: dpa
Wepper was all the happier when he was allowed to appear on stage in 1952 in the children’s play “Peter Pan” at the Munich State Theater. Seven years later there was a breakthrough, also internationally, with Bernhard Wicki’s anti-war film “Die Brücke”. Further offers followed, for example for the film “On the Reeperbahn at half past midnight”.
Acting – a passion that Wepper shared with his brother Elmar, who starred in Doris Dörrie’s highly acclaimed film “Cherry Blossoms – Hanami”. She also enjoyed fishing, especially fly fishing. “A wonderful ritual has grown from this,” Elmar Wepper once told “Bild am Sonntag”. “If we lose sight of each other for a long time for professional reasons, we say: Let’s go to the water.” Then we smoke the fresh catch for a quarter of an hour, accompanied by a very good wine, and then the conversation ends in “mmh, aah and cheers.” “said Wepper. But the older one had something ahead of him: “I would sometimes wish for his spontaneity,” Elmar once said about his big brother.
The actor brothers Fritz (l) and Elmar Wepper. Photo: Stackelberg/dpa
Fritz Wepper was admired and received many awards, including the Bavarian Television Prize. And he enjoyed the jet-set life. “Fritzi has pride of ownership, is a passionate collector, hunter and fisherman. “Giving up pleasure is not part of your DNA,” said actor Bernd Herzsprung, describing his good friend. The number of people Wepper knew was also illustrious. In 1968 he filmed the crime thriller “The Man with the Glass Eye” with Iris Berben. He celebrated with Leopold Prince of Bavaria, danced with Sweden’s Queen Silvia and got along with the US actress Liza Minnelli, whom he met while filming the musical “Cabaret”. A few weeks earlier, Minnelli had wished her good friend well when things were already bad for him: “Please pray for Fritz that he gets the peace and love that he has always brought into so many lives, including mine. Fritz, I love you, now and always, Liza”.
Fritzi has pride in ownership and is a passionate collector, hunter and fisherman. Giving up pleasure is not part of his DNA.
Bernd Herzsprung
Actor and friend
Otherwise, Fritz Wepper preferred to shield his private life. In 1979 he married his girlfriend Angela, who had two daughters. Sophie was born in 1981, now a mother herself. Then in 2009 there was a scandal: Wepper’s relationship with Susanne Kellermann, who was more than 30 years younger, became public. The two had a daughter, then separated soon after the birth and Wepper returned to his wife. After Angela Wepper’s death in 2019, the old love for Kellermann was revived, and there was even a secret wedding in 2021.
The thing with the car
An actor who loved consistency, both privately and professionally. From 1968 he started working as a TV police officer on ZDF alongside Erik Ode in “The Commissioner”. In 1974 he left the role to his brother Elmar. He himself became an assistant alongside Horst Tappert in “Derrick”, a series that became famous worldwide. A sentence from the ZDF series, which was discontinued in 1998, remained inextricably linked to Wepper: “Harry, get the car,” even if it never happened that way. The original said: “Harry, we need the car – now.”
Horst Tappert as Stephan Derrick and Fritz Wepper as Harry Klein stand next to each other while filming an episode of the ZDF crime series “Derrick”. Photo: Georg Goebel/dpa
In 2002, the series “For Heaven’s Sake” started on ARD, which was to hold a special place in Wepper’s heart. As mayor Wolfgang Wöller, he made life difficult for the sisters of the fictional Kaltenthal monastery. He could live out his comedic side, scheme and joke to his heart’s content. The end of the series in 2021 therefore disappointed him very much. “That was a blow to the office,” Wepper told the German Press Agency at the time. He would have liked to continue, also because he loved the film team so much. In the end it became sad. “There were tears, including mine.”
Also read:
Fritz Wepper: “A lot of tears were shed”
But Wepper was a fighter – also in terms of health. He had heart surgery and fought with all his might against the cancer. He had to be treated in hospital again and again. In 2021, he revealed what he thought about his own death in his autobiography “An Eternal Moment”. “I have accepted that I will die at some point. But the how worries me. Nobody wants a painful end.”
The actors Elmar Wepper (l.) and Fritz Wepper receive the “Blue Panther” trophy at the Bavarian Television Awards ceremony in the Prinzregententheater. Photo: Tobias Hase/dpa
Wepper himself had made provisions for his end, with a will and wishes for the day of his burial in the family grave in Munich. “I want to be buried in my black kimono, which I wear to meditate,” he wrote in his book. He also wanted to wear a Buddhist bracelet with wooden beads, “both symbols of letting go.”