She was the first West German television commissioner: The actress Ingrid Fröhlich is dead. As the German press agency learned from family circles on Saturday, she died on Friday.
Fröhlich was 81 years old.
She had her first roles at the Volkstheater in Vienna and was seen in several television productions in the 1970s, including the popular ZDF series "Drei sind ein zuviel".
On January 2, 1978 she wrote a piece of West German television history when she appeared in the ZDF series "SOKO 5113" in the role of Renate Burger.
This made her the first female TV investigator on West German television, a few weeks before Nicole Heesters first appeared as "Tatort" commissioner.
The GDR television had already had an investigator solve cases in 1971 with Sigrid Göhler as Lieutenant Vera Arndt.
At the time, she didn't even think about being a pioneer, Fröhlich recalled in a dpa interview last year.
Although almost only men investigated on the streets at the time, she did not encounter any prejudice on the set.
"Back then, the scriptwriter just thought that it was time for a woman," said Fröhlich, who lived in Wolfratshausen near Munich.
Strong and "womanly"
After a career as a theater actress in Vienna and Munich and many TV films, the "Queen of the evening program" had big plans for her role at that time: strong and at the same time "womanly" miming a policewoman, conducting tough investigations and questioning suspects.
But the reality was disappointing for her: While her male colleagues hunted criminals with pithy slogans in the first episodes and sat smoking in the police station after nightly investigations, policewoman Burger was often left out.
“Should I come with you?” She asks her colleague in one episode before a mission.
"Too dangerous," he simply replies.
"You could have used this role back then, but I was just a coffee maker, and that was what every woman was back then," said Fröhlich.
"Today I don't even know how I got the role," she once told the dpa. “First I got a role - and then again through a lot of little happy coincidences, and so it went on and on.” Her acting career had actually started in the delivery room, because Fröhlich was a trained midwife. Her boss repeatedly encouraged her to try herself as an actress: “The doctor said that I had an actress face.” Ingrid Fröhlich was denied her best-known role as a TV policewoman in 1978 despite her pioneering role. The actress drew conclusions - and left the "SOKO 5113" after nineteen episodes. She only came back in 2018 for a guest appearance on the 40th anniversary of the series - as the main suspect.
After her television career, Fröhlich moved to a very unusual industry. She and her son made globes very successfully. The company has since sold millions of globes in more than forty countries.