Fritz Wepper: Obituary for our Harry from duty

2024-03-25 17:10:53

Culture Fritz Wepper †

He was much of what we all are

As of: 6:10 p.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes

Dare? Which car? Fritz Wepper (1941–2024)

Source: dpa

When Hollywood came calling, he was busy on German television. Fritz Wepper became the face of the early evening series, the Harry from duty. Nobody ever said that he should get the car – but his audience loved him for doing it at any time.

He didn’t keep him, his younger brother, waiting too long. When the actor Elmar Wepper died at the end of October 2023, simply passed out, as it was said, the feature pages called after this melancholic air spirit they discovered late (“Cherry Blossoms – Hanami”) with such tenderness and affection, as if they, too, had had one for too long relatives who have fallen out of sight.

Fritz, the older, the more robust, the out-and-out folk actor and big brother who is hardly plagued by doubts, would have been less likely to have such tenderness as Elmar showed on the screen.

But why exactly? Fritz, who has now died in a Munich hospice at the age of 82 after a long illness, let his tears of joy flow freely when Elmar received the German Film Prize. The brother’s happiness was also his.

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They were a pair of brothers who couldn’t have been more different, but their differences complemented and supported each other. Growing up fatherless in the rubble of post-war Munich, they played a lot outside and allowed each other to shine in their own individuality. In their own way, both created a broad impact across the Federal Republic, so it is hardly an exaggeration to say: German television was the Weppers.

But Fritz especially. The ARD series “For Heaven’s Sake” with its 20 seasons from 2002 to 2021 – Wepper played the main role as the mayor – was at times the most-watched series on German television, and the proverbial “Derrick” sentence “Harry, get him “Wagon” was never that popular, but it always had a calming effect in early serial small talk.

From “Cabaret” to “Derrick”

Unlike the more thoughtful Elmar, Fritz was determined to focus on acting from the start. Even as a child he appeared on stage in “Peter Pan” and earned his first real money. After his international screen breakthrough in Bernhard Wicki’s anti-war film “Die Brücke” (1959), especially after his appearance in the 1972 musical film, which won eight Oscars „Cabaret“ At the side of Liza Minnelli, the handsome guy with the impeccable attitude could have had a great Hollywood career: in “Cabaret” directed by Bob Fosse, Wepper played the young bon vivant Fritz Wendel, who denied his Jewish roots in 1931 Berlin.

But when the opportunity for more arose for Wepper shortly afterwards, he said truthfully that his crime film commitments still tied him to Germany at the moment. He always stuck to agreements. Answer Hollywood: “Ok, forget it.”

Fritz Wepper (r.) in “The Bridge”, 1959

Quelle: picture alliance/United Archives

And so Fritz Wepper persistently, but sometimes a little one-dimensionally, embodied that unique mixture of statesman and country-smart provincial that the audience loved about him because they recognized a lot of themselves in him: something average, calm, content and yet, when necessary, stubborn . Despite this proven manner, he always managed to give his series characters new comedic facets, even swung his hips as an Elvis impersonator and showed no fear of contact with the tabloids.

He was an approachable person who shared his love and suffering not naively but warmly. Unlike his brother Elmar, Fritz never took a safe inner distance from acting. When series were discontinued after decades, he did not, like others, practice a display of mindful satisfaction with what had happened, but rather clearly expressed his disappointment with the ending.

Especially at this time, it’s good to take another look at both ends of his acting spectrum: his ready-to-duty composure as the eternal second-tier inspector, and his young, horrified, dirt-smeared face as a teenager in “The Bridge.” It’s eerie and incredibly fitting that Wepper’s youthful hero seems more relevant today than the nice, well-fed lower middle class types from the feel-good era of German television. It’s finally over with Wepper’s death.