MOVIE NEWS – German actor Fritz Wepper became known worldwide thanks to his portrayal of Inspector Harry Klein’s trusted assistant, Stephan Derrick (Horst Tappert).

German actor Fritz Wepper died on Monday at the age of eighty-two. Wepper’s best-known role was Detective Harry Klein in the Derrick series. For twenty-five years and 281 episodes, the actor played the loyal assistant of Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Derrick, played by Horst Tapper. The actor’s wife told the German newspaper Bild that Wepper fell asleep peacefully. He spent his last days in a hospice in Bavaria.

Fritz Wepper was born in 1941. He was always meant to be an actor. He played his first known role in 1959 in the German film Die Brücke (The Bridge), which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In 1972, alongside Liza Minnelli and Marisa Berenson, he played Fritz Wendel, a Jewish man pretending to be a Christian, in the Oscar-winning film version of Cabaret.

The Derrick series was filmed from 1973 to 1998. The first broadcast was in 1974. All along, the two of them provided the two main characters. His former co-star, Horst Tapper, died in December 2008. Interestingly, before Derrick, he played the same character in the TV series Der Kommissar (The Inspector), which ran from 1969 to 1976. Wepper left the series in 1974 in favour of Derrick.

Source: Italy24