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Bickenbach (dpa) - The television director Heinz Schirk died almost two weeks before his 89th birthday.
As the German press agency learned from his family, the filmmaker died on December 10th in Bickenbach near Darmstadt.
Schirk was a fixture in the television business in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
He shone as the maker of the much-seen «Tatort» thrillers and as the director of the first season of «Liebling Kreuzberg» with Manfred Krug in 1986.
He received a lot of praise for the excellent TV documentary "Die Wannseekonferenz" from 1984 with Dietrich Mattausch in the role of Reinhard Heydrich and Gerd Böckmann as Adolf Eichmann.
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A kind of regular director was Schirk, who was born in Gdansk in 1931 and fled west at the end of the World War, with the Hessischer Rundfunk.
For HR, among other things, he shot the “Tatort: Zurich Fruit” with Commissioner Bergmann (Heinz Treuke).
The episode broadcast on February 12, 1978 had almost 25 million viewers and is still considered by media researchers to be the “crime scene” with the third highest number of viewers of all episodes - after “red - red - dead” and “school-leaving certificate”.
In the case of “Tatort”, for example, Schirk was also responsible for the first Berlin case in 1971 and the crime novel “Der Mann aus Zimmer 22” from 1974 with Hansjörg Felmy as Essen investigator Heinz Haferkamp.
"Heinz Schirk was a great director because he loved the actors and not tortured them," said his good friend, the actor Walter Renneisen (80, "Derrick", "Tatort"), the dpa.
Schirk himself had short acting appearances in many of his films.
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The lexicon of international film calls the television film “The Wannsee Conference” “an impressive and harrowing documentary game”.
Most recently, Schirk lived withdrawn in Bickenbach in southern Hesse and devoted himself to painting, among other things, as his friend and former son-in-law, the actor Martin May, told dpa.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201223-99-796280 / 4