The chief inspector Franz Markowitz was responsible for "offences against people" in Berlin for a while in the years after reunification.
He has solved eight cases in total, all of which could be seen on Sunday evening, when the “crime scene” is traditionally played in Germany.
And one self-respecting actor also has a career in this crime series that seems to have been around for a long time.
The character of Franz Markowitz was made for Günter Lamprecht.
He was a true Berliner himself.
For him, the pool of experiences that an actor draws on when he puts himself in a role was no less than the city itself.
The fact that Markowitz bore the first name Franz could be seen as a small homage to one of Lamprecht's greatest roles: he was Franz Biberkopf in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's TV series "Berlin Alexanderplatz".
At first he didn't know what to do with the name, as he later said in his memoirs "A hellish thing, life".
"You're my Biberkopp," Fassbinder had said to him face to face while filming "The Marriage of Maria Braun," a contemporary classic of New German Cinema, in which Lamprecht had a small role.
“Good fodder for this role”
Although he knew Döblin's novel, he hadn't gotten very far reading it.
He was more into the atmosphere of the city.
From his father, a pub-goer, he knew the people who were to take shape in Fassbinder's adaptation.
"I had good fodder for this role," is how Lamprecht expressed his approach.
He literally had to eat to gain twelve kilos for Franz Biberkopf.
However, the career of the 1930-born son of a taxi driver began in western Germany.
After training at the Max Reinhardt School for Acting, he found his first engagement in Bochum, then in Oberhausen.
In 1960 he could be seen in the cinema for the first time as a thug in a dance bar in Michael Kehlmann's "Bridge of Destiny".
He worked for Fassbinder in 1973 in "Welt am Draht", a year later he had a brief appearance as a doctor at the sickbed of the tragic main character in "Martha".
The baker Baum was certainly a key role in Erwin Keusch's "The Baker's Bread", a paradigmatic attempt to show modern working environments in the cinema.
Lamprecht, with his soft facial features, was not one for the triumphant roles, rather someone who takes it or who has just enough strength to face life,
that it doesn't swallow him.
He repeatedly referred to his experiences at the end of the Second World War, when he belonged to the Hitler Youth.
In 1997 he played the director Erik Charell from the days of the Weimar Republic in Joseph Vilsmaier's "Comedian Harmonists".
In the television series "Babylon Berlin" there was a late appearance in a similar context: in the midst of a new German star system, Lamprecht played Hindenburg, a role in which non-simultaneity met, and which, for that very reason, alongside Biberkopf and Markowitz, was particularly played by Günter Lamprecht will be remembered.
In 1997 he played the director Erik Charell from the days of the Weimar Republic in Joseph Vilsmaier's "Comedian Harmonists".
In the television series "Babylon Berlin" there was a late appearance in a similar context: in the midst of a new German star system, Lamprecht played Hindenburg, a role in which non-simultaneity met, and which, for that very reason, alongside Biberkopf and Markowitz, was particularly played by Günter Lamprecht will be remembered.
In 1997 he played the director Erik Charell from the days of the Weimar Republic in Joseph Vilsmaier's "Comedian Harmonists".
In the television series "Babylon Berlin" there was a late appearance in a similar context: in the midst of a new German star system, Lamprecht played Hindenburg, a role in which non-simultaneity met, and which, for that very reason, alongside Biberkopf and Markowitz, was particularly played by Günter Lamprecht will be remembered.
In 1999, Lamprecht was in the wrong place at the wrong time with his then partner Claudia Amm.
He was shot during a rampage in Bad Reichenhall and injured his arm, Claudia Amm was fatally hit in the stomach.
In his memoirs he would have liked to have left it out, it was "a bit too emotional for him".
The soul, however, was precisely the strength of the actor Günter Lamprecht.
He died last Tuesday at the age of 92 in Bonn-Bad Godesberg.