In 1966 - the year of the German theater revolution in the West, the year of Peter Stein's "Torquato Tasso" in Bremen, the year in which Peter Zadek's "Spring Awakening" celebrated a new generation of free lovers - Dieter Mann appeared at the Deutsches Theater in Ost -Berlin for the first time in appearance.

As Templar in a production of "Nathan" by Friedo Solter.

He is described in the text as "young" and "handsome";

as proud and handsome, with a prominent dimpled chin man acted at that time.

The appearance was to have consequences for the actor, who was born in Berlin in 1941 as the son of a worker and who, after elementary school, initially completed an apprenticeship as a top lathe operator.

Simon Strauss

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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In addition to working in a grinding machine factory, Mann discovered his passion for acting and worked as an extra in Brecht's "Berliner Ensemble". From 1962 to 1964 he learned the trade at the "Ernst Busch" acting school and was hired at the German Theater while he was still a student From the mid-1960s to 2006, i.e. for more than forty years, Dieter Mann stayed at his house and played over 60 roles there.From 1984 to 1991, i.e. during the decisive years of reunification, he was also the director of the Deutsches Theater and thus joins the illustrious Berlin tradition of acting theater directors.At that time, for example, he gave Frank Castorf's career a decisive boost.

Dieter Mann impressed himself in the consciousness of the theater-loving public in particular with two roles: as the seventeen-year-old Edgar Wibeau in Ulrich Plenzdorf's controversial youth play "The New Sorrows of the Young W." (more than three hundred performances) and as the waiter Jean in the 1976, also in the Television successful revue "Two Ties".While he was active as FDJ secretary at the drama school in the days of the GDR, was a member of the SED party leadership at the Deutsches Theater and from 1975 also belonged to the central board of the art union, he turned away after reunification from politics and being an artistic director completely to the aesthetics of acting.Dieter Mann stood in front of the camera in over 140 film and television productions - including Konrad Wolf's "I was nineteen" or Herrmann Zschoche's "Glück im Hinterhaus".

To the deepest abyss

His career in old age is impressive: with Niels-Peter Rudolph and Thomas Langhoff, among others, he achieved impressive works, including as Wehrhahn in Gerhart Hauptmann's "Biberpelz", as Creon in Sophocles' "Antigone" and as Odysseus in "Ithaka" by Botho Strauss.

The simple, strong power of his expression, the technically concentrated tone of his language, which never seemed strained or artificial, made him an actor whose acting was trusted and willingly followed into the deepest abysses of his characters.

As a reader and audio book speaker, Mann reached a wide audience and occasionally appeared with literary solo evenings - for example with a monologue from Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain".

Dieter Mann acted in front of the camera for the last time in 2011: as a depressed, suicidal widower alongside Martin Seifert and Renate Krößner in the movie "Forget Your End".

In 2016, the already visibly marked star actor of the Deutsches Theater announced at a reading at the very place of his first successes that he had Parkinson's disease.

Dieter Mann died at the age of eighty in his beloved hometown of Berlin.