2023-04-19 09:13:16
What you can do with a white sheet of paper: If we follow the story of Claus Theo Gärtner, the description of the role of the Frankfurt private detective Josef Matula read exactly: white space that had to be filled. Gärtner filled it with plenty from 1981 to 2013 with this matula. At the beginning he seemed revolutionary for German crime television in view of the cautious older gentlemen who usually investigated there.
Trademarks: leather jacket and the Alfa Romeo
Similar to the American detective Rockford, an outsider entered the stage with Gärtner’s Matula in “A Case for Two”. Without authority and official authority behind him, always on the side of the weak and betrayed, hired by the lawyer. Trademarks: worn leather jacket, Alfa Romeo, which is not suitable for a speed of thirty, of course a lack of respect for supposed authorities, undercover camouflage, action in fist fights and firefights, stunts that Gärtner – with increasing self-irony of age – did without a double. Götz Georges Schimanski was Matula’s brother in spirit in the German crime thriller. In literature, the private investigator Kemal Kayankaya of the writer Jakob Arjouni, who died early, was his counterpart. They wandered through the dingy corners of a Frankfurt that no longer exists.
The fact that Matula was available in 300 episodes was due to the success of the ZDF series. Gärtner had four partners over the years, Günter Strack, who died in 1999, followed in the role of friend and lawyer who sent Matula onto the street, followed by Rainer Hunold, Mathias Herrmann and Paul Frielinghaus. The lawyers came and went, Gärtner and Matula stayed – even after the end of the series. Between 2017 and 2019 he would go out in the old role once a year at Easter and make the most of it.
Born in the middle of the war on April 19, 1943, the son of a businessman and a ballet dancer, Gärtner completed an acting course in Hanover. He received the Federal Film Prize for his first major role in the film “Zoff” (1972). And then he allowed himself to be persuaded by the producer Georg Althammer in 1980 to play this private detective Matula. He is said to have written “100 episodes okay – CTG” on a beer mat. There were a few more, so many that the private gardener was addressed on the street as Mr. Matula. Couldn’t you recruit him for a job? Today the man with no expiration date turns eighty.
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