Horst Tappert


Horst Tappert was a German film and television actor best known for the role of Inspector Stephan Derrick in the television drama Derrick.

Biography

Horst Tappert was born on 26 May 1923 in Elberfeld, Germany. His father, Julius Tappert, was a civil servant; his mother was Ewaldine Röll Tappert. Following high school and at the age of 17, Tappert was drafted into the German Army during World War II. Aged 19, he was, according to his widow against his will, transferred from the Army to the Waffen-SS, where the author of the Derrick series, Herbert Reinecker, had also served. Initially a member of a reserve anti-aircraft unit in Arolsen, he was listed as a grenadier with the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf in March 1943. In 1945, he was briefly a prisoner of war in Seehausen, Altmark. Following the war, he was hired as a bookkeeper at a theatre in Stendal, Germany, and became interested in acting. He took acting classes and gave his stage debut in Stendal, playing Dr. Stribel in Paul Helwig's Die Flitterwochen.
In the following years, he changed employers several times, and in 1956, started working at the Kammerspiele, Munich. An independent actor since 1967, he worked as an actor until he died.
In the late 1950s, Tappert started taking part in movie and television productions. His big breakthrough was in 1966 with the three-part television show Die Gentlemen bitten zur Kasse, in which he played train robber Michael Donegan. In 1968, he changed sides by playing Scotland Yard detective Perkins in Edgar Wallace movies. In 1970-71, he co-starred in three crime dramas directed by Jesus Franco, She Killed in Ecstasy, and The Devil Came from Akasava.
When the second public television station in West Germany, the ZDF, started planning a new mystery series with a different type of investigator in 1973, he was chosen for the character of detective Stephan Derrick, with sidekick assistant Harry Klein. The character Stephan Derrick became a cult figure. The series was licensed in 104 countries and was popular with audiences in China, Japan, and Italy. The last of 281 episodes was filmed in 1998, when Tappert reached his self-imposed age limit of 75 years old for being a television actor.

Personal life

Divorced twice, he last lived in Gräfelfing near Munich with his third wife, Ursula Pistor. He was the father of three children. Tappert enjoyed fishing and hunting. He had a summer holiday home on the coast of northern Norway, a country where he also became a popular visitor, as Derrick, as well as a private person. Tappert and his wife Ursula had a cabin in Hamarøy Municipality in Nordland from 1990 to 2008, when due to his age and failing health, they had to sell the cabin. His wife Ursula Pistor is also an actor, a graduate of the same acting school in Berlin as Ellinor Hamsun, daughter of Knut Hamsun.
In interviews and his memoirs, Tappert did not elaborate on his World War II career, claiming to have served as a company medic in the Wehrmacht, after which he became a prisoner of war. In April 2013, he was revealed to have joined the 3. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Totenkopf, then deployed on the Eastern Front, in March 1943. Historian Jan Erik Schulte, an expert on the history of the SS, said that the circumstances of Tappert's membership in the SS and the question of whether he was pressured or coerced into joining remain unclear.
Following the discovery of Tappert's service with the Waffen SS during the war, German broadcaster ZDF dropped all repeats of Derrick. Similarly, Bavaria's interior ministry said it was considering stripping the late actor of an honorary chief police inspector title awarded to Tappert in 1980.
Tappert died on 13 December 2008 in Planegg, Germany at age 85.

Filmography

  • 1950: Doctor Praetorius - Verkäufer
  • 1958: The Trapp Family in America
  • 1958: Wir Wunderkinder - Teacher Schindler
  • 1958: Arms and the Man
  • 1959: The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp - Herr Parker
  • 1959: Jacqueline - Haack, Journalist
  • 1959: The Beautiful Adventure - Frécon
  • 1959: Ruf ohne Echo - Pierre
  • 1961: Zu viele Köche - Hoteldetektiv Odell
  • 1961: Ein schöner Tag - Er
  • 1961: Küß mich Kätchen - Erster Ganove
  • 1962: ' - Vikar Nigel Matthews
  • 1962: He Can't Stop Doing It - Simpson
  • 1962: Snow White and the Seven Jugglers - Hugendobler, Künstleragent
  • 1963: Das tödliche Patent - Inspector Morland
  • 1963: ' - Krause
  • 1963: Leonce und Lena - King Peter of the Kingdom of Popo
  • 1964: Der Aussichtsturm - Eliott Nash
  • 1964: Sechs Personen suchen einen Autor - Regisseur
  • 1965: Eine reine Haut - Harry
  • 1966: ' - Michael Donegan
  • 1966: Ein Tag in Paris - Boury
  • 1966: Der Kinderdieb - Colonel Bigua
  • 1966: Das ganz große Ding - Jimmy Warren
  • 1966: Der Mann aus Melbourne - Der Fremde
  • 1966: Jerry Cotton: Die Rechnung – eiskalt serviert - Charles Anderson
  • 1966: Four Queens for an Ace - Man in Restaurant
  • 1966: ' - Narrator
  • 1967: Liebe für Liebe - Scandal
  • 1968: ' - Walter Bergmann / Travel agency owner
  • 1968: The Hound of Blackwood Castle - Donald Fairbanks
  • 1968: Das Kriminalmuseum - Friedrich Groth
  • 1968: The Gorilla of Soho - Insp. David Perkins
  • 1969: The Man with the Glass Eye - Insp. Perkins
  • 1969: Seven Days Grace - Klevenow
  • 1970: ' - Kommissar Perrak
  • 1971: The Devil Came from Akasava - Dr. Andrew Thorrsen
  • 1971: Und Jimmy ging zum Regenbogen - Dr. Otto Forster
  • 1971: ' - Stubenrauch
  • 1971: The Captain - Konsul Carstens
  • 1971: She Killed in Ecstasy - Inspector
  • 1972: ' - Charles Barton
  • 1972:
  • 1973: Eine Frau bleibt eine Frau - Oberstudienrat
  • 1974: Plus minus null - Schattat
  • 1974–1998 Derrick - Stephan Derrick
  • 1974: Auch ich war nur ein mittelmäßiger Schüler - Dr. Siegfried Elsenbeck
  • 1987: Cinématon
  • 2000: Der Kardinal – Der Preis der Liebe - Clemens Roetger
  • 2001: In 80 Jahren um die Welt
  • 2003: The Uncrowned Heart - Rudolph der Listige
  • 2004: Derrick – Die Pflicht ruft - Stephan Derrick

    Books