"Commissioner Ehrlicher"

“Tatort” legend Peter Sodann dead at the age of 87

For 15 years, Sodann played the amiably grumpy chief inspector Bruno Ehrlicher.(Bild: APA/dpa-Zentralbild/Waltraud Grubitzsch)

The German TV and theater star Peter Sodann is dead. He died on Friday at the age of 87 in his hometown of Halle an der Saale, his family announced on Sunday. Sodann was best known as the slightly grumpy chief inspector Bruno Ehrlicher in "Tatort", which he played from 1992 to 2007.

Honest and direct - that's how the actor went through life. Sodann came from Meissen in Saxony, where he was born on June 1, 1936 as the son of a worker.

"I read everything I could get my hands on"
By his own account, he was already able to read at the age of around five. "I read everything I could get my hands on: German heroic sagas, Wilhelm Hauff's fairy tales, Karl May, Robinson Crusoe, Tarzan's adventures in the jungle," he recounted in his memoirs entitled "No half measures". His big mouth helped the worker's son to assert himself.

An adventurous life in the GDR
After an apprenticeship as a toolmaker and a foray into law, he studied at the Leipzig Theater Academy. Along the way, he ran the "Rat der Spötter", a cabaret that was disbanded in 1961 due to a program that was deemed counter-revolutionary. Sodann was arrested for anti-state agitation and expelled from university. He spent nine months in prison and was later spied on by the Stasi.

Also highly decorated as a theater man
After graduating late, director Helene Weigel brought the disgraced actor to the Berliner Ensemble in 1964. Shortly afterwards, he made his first major feature film "Sansibar oder der letzte Grund" with Bernhard Wicki. After engagements at the Berliner Ensemble, in Erfurt, Chemnitz and Magdeburg, he came to Halle. There, in the 1980s, he worked with colleagues in a run-down GDR cinema - and created his own stage: the "new theater".

He did receive recognition in the GDR: in 1986 he was awarded the National Prize. In reunified Germany, he received the Federal Cross of Merit in 2001. In 2005, the city of Halle let his contract with him expire, "the theater was cut off from me," Sodann said in his autobiography, not without bitterness.

Sodann in the year 2013(Bild: APA/dpa/Marc Müller)

"I am fighting against oblivion"
He then devoted himself wholeheartedly to another project close to his heart: the literary heritage of the GDR. Since 1989, Sodann has collected several million books that were printed in East Germany between 1945 and the end of the GDR and were in danger of being thrown away. From these, he set up a GDR library in a former manor in the village of Staucha in the district of Meißen. "I'm fighting against forgetting," he said. "The past cannot simply be wiped away."

He also had political ambitions. In 2005, he wanted to stand as a non-party member for the left-wing PDS in the Bundestag elections, but withdrew his candidacy shortly afterwards - otherwise he would have had to give up the "Tatort" role. From 1992 to 2007, his detective Ehrlicher investigated first in Dresden and later in Leipzig.

Left-wing candidate in the German presidential election
In 2009, Sodann stood as a candidate for the Left Party in the German presidential election. This earned him admiration from fans, but also a lot of head-shaking - because of public statements about wanting to build "socialism or something similar", where people are all equal. One of his sons, Franz Sodann (50), is a member of parliament for the Left Party in Saxony. Peter Sodann had four children and was married twice.