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The pub in front of which Horst Schimanski shouted “shit” for the first time has been closed for years.
The “Tatort” inspector, played by Götz George, once drank, sang and flirted in the “Bierquelle”.
Right in front of it, on Fürst-Bismarck-Strasse, is Dagmar Dahmen.
Here in Duisburg-Ruhrort, she knows every square centimeter - and the stories that go with it.
Dahmen offers guided tours to Schimanski locations.
She points to a facade with brown slate.
"Back then, Zottel threw the television out of the window on the second floor onto the street," says Dahmen.
This scene from the "Tatort - Duisburg-Ruhrort" is a piece of German television history.
Schimanski's swearword cursed across the street is one of them.
ARD celebrates the 50th birthday of its crime series.
Such anniversaries also include discussions about which “crime scene” investigators were the best.
Even the pollsters have looked into it.
In 2008, Horst Schimanski and his colleague Christian Thanner came in first in an Emnid survey.
Dagmar Dahmen is not surprised.
She also likes the thrillers from Duisburg, even with the fourth or fifth repetition, she doesn't feel bored.
Dahmen grew up in Büderich on the Lower Rhine - around 30 minutes by car from Ruhrort.
She later worked as a journalist in Duisburg.
It was there that Dahmen came into closer contact with Schimanski.
It was in 2011, 30 years after the first “Tatort” in Duisburg, when she drove to Neumarkt in Ruhrort for a WDR report.
She spoke to local residents - about Schimanski and Ruhrort.
Many raved about the good old days, when sailors still ran through the streets and the district was considered the richest in Duisburg.
Then came the decline of coal and steel.
And the pub died out.
In the post-war period there were still more than 100 restaurants.
“Now we're just ten,” says Dahmen.
"And that includes the chip stalls."
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The location on the water and a few beautiful old houses have remained in the district.
And the Schimmi myth.
That also impressed Dahmen.
And so she came up with the idea of offering Schimanski tours through Ruhrort.
She founded the company DU Tours and set off for the first time in March 2012.
Since then, she and her colleagues have taken around 14,000 guests over the Ruhrort cobblestones.
Even tourists from Austria and the Netherlands were among them.
A tour costs 25 euros - a currywurst snack is included in the price.
There is currently a corona-related break, says Dahmen.
Götz George in the supermarket
The format has not worn out yet.
“The participants often get involved and tell their own Schimmi anecdotes,” says Dahmen.
Some report of encounters with Götz George in the supermarket, others of the fact that they have already worked as extras in crime novels.
"Somebody calls up and says that he was once a body of water in the 'crime scene'," says Dahmen.
The 56-year-old meets Johannes Heggen a few steps away from the former “Bierquelle”.
The Ruhrorter runs a funeral home on Fürst-Bismarck-Straße.
Schimanski fans know his outdoor advertising.
When this certain shag freaked out in front of the camera, the company emblem of the family business could be seen seconds before.
Johannes Heggen immediately starts chatting.
“The apartment that the TV came from belonged to my parents,” he says.
Heggen followed the filming back then and still remembers that Zottel needed several attempts.
“The scene wasn't finished until the third TV,” says the undertaker.
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Dagmar Dahmen draws from such stories.
The Ruhrorters always brought together new details from the Schimanski period.
She now also knows where Lilo lived.
A carpenter had given her the tip.
In the opening episode of June 28, 1981, Schimanski ends up in bed with host Lilo from the restaurant “Zum Anker”.
When the chief detective gets up in the morning, he sees the huge harbor cranes on Mercator Island from the window.
The current owner of the apartment on Dammstrasse can no longer enjoy this view.
The cranes are no longer standing.
Structural change.
The apartment in Wanheim
When the idea of dedicating a street to the famous chief detective came up a good seven years ago, there was great support from the population.
A 30 meter short, so far unnamed path was chosen for this.
There Horst Schimanski had taken cover in the episode “Friends”.
Initially the name "Schimmi-Gasse" was discussed.
But since the former national soccer player Horst Szymaniak had the same nickname, there was a risk of confusion.
This is how "Horst-Schimanski-Gasse" became a favorite.
"Then the authorities announced that streets should not be named after fictional characters," says Dahmen.
“But there is also Dornröschengasse in Germany.” The fact that a film company also owned the rights to the Schimanski name made things even more complicated.
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In the end it worked.
In 2014 the inauguration followed without fanfare.
In the morning, city workers put up two street signs with the words “Horst-Schimanski-Gasse” - that was it.
Dahmen would have wished for a festive act with director Hajo Gies and of course with the main actor.
“But I heard that Götz George was very happy about the street naming,” she says.
Götz George, who died in 2016, played the Schimanski in 29 "Tatort" episodes.
From 1997 to 2013 the series “Schimanski”, which consisted of 17 films, was shown.
And when the last case was shot, the police officer still seemed to be present in Ruhrort.
Anyone who walks through the streets with Dahmen has the feeling that at any moment a silver-colored Citroën CX could turn the corner and a man with a beige-gray field jacket get out.
Of course, Dahmen cannot go to all locations on her tours.
Many filming locations are in Cologne or Munich.
And the very first “crime scene” scene from Schimanski's apartment does not come from the north of Duisburg.
For a long time this apartment was suspected in Ruhrort - until it turned out that the scene was shot ten kilometers further south in a prefabricated building in the Duisburg district of Wanheim.
If Schimanski had to walk from there to the "Bierquelle", it would have taken him two hours.
Source: Welt am Sonntag