Mourning for TV legend

“Sesame Street” star Horst Janson is dead

Horst Janson with Bert , Ernie and Grobie from "Sesame Street"(Bild: Eventpress Herrmann / dpa Picture Alliance)

Whether as "Bastian", in "Salto Mortale" or as a friend of Tiffy and Samson in "Sesame Street": In the 70s and 80s, Horst Janson conquered audiences in top-rated television programs. Now he has died at the age of 89. 

The actor had been struggling with health problems over the past year. In the summer of 2024, it was announced that he had been hospitalized after falling down the stairs. Janson lived with his second wife Hella, to whom he had been married for more than 40 years, in Grünwald near Munich.

Born in Mainz, he had already played his first role as a schoolboy in a Grillparzer play. He later took acting lessons in Wiesbaden and continued to appear on the theater stage. His first film role followed in 1959 in "The Buddenbrooks", and from then on, one engagement followed the next.

An audience of millions
He became known to an audience of millions as Sascha in the circus series "Salto Mortale", in which he starred from 1969 to 1972. Children admired and envied him in the early 80s because he was allowed to live with Tiffy and Samson in "Sesame Street". Whether "Forsthaus Falkenau", "Immenhof", "Ein Fall für zwei", "Tatort" or Rosamunde Pilcher romances - there is hardly a television series in which Janson has not been seen. In 2005 and 2006, the passionate amateur sailor was in front of the camera as the captain for the TV series "Under White Sails".

Hollywood
Janson was also engaged internationally. In the 1970s, he played alongside Hollywood stars such as Tony Curtis, Peter O'Toole, Richard Burton and Charles Bronson. Who could claim to have been "stabbed by Roger Moore in Malta?", he wrote in his book about this eventful time. Janson says it was always important to him to do theater. His favorite play: "The Old Man and the Sea" based on the novella by Ernest Hemingway. He also appeared in the Karl May plays in Bad Segeberg.