The film composer Martin Böttcher is dead. His music accompanied numerous Winnetou films. Böttcher died on the night of Saturday at the age of 91, confirmed his daughter Betsy Schlüter. First, the Bayerischer Rundfunk had reported on the death of the artist, who lived recently in the vicinity of Rendsburg in Schleswig-Holstein.
Böttcher composed the music of ten Karl May movies and became one of the most successful film composers in Germany. In 1962, his "Old Shatterhand" melody led the German charts for 17 weeks.
His debut as a composer in a feature film production gave Böttcher 1955 in "The Captain and his hero". Already the second film became a great success: "Die Halbstarken" (1956) with Horst Buchholz. After that, Böttcher set new stories for the cinema, later for the television. "13 little donkeys" with Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann's "Pater Brown" films were just as much as Edgar Wallace's films and most recently "Pfarrer Braun" (until 2013).
Böttcher, who has not heard anything since falling as a child in one ear, had taught himself to play the guitar during captivity during the Second World War. After the war, the road led him to Hamburg, where he began in the dance and entertainment orchestra of the Northwest German Radio. In 1954, Böttcher, who was actually a pilot, finally decided to compose.