Karl Heinz Vosgerau at 85
The grand old man of German television film
Zadek, Zadek and then Fassbinder again! Known above all for the roles of the charmeur and grand seigneur he played with such élan for the German TV broadcaster ZDF during the 1980s and 1990s, Karl-Heinz Vosgerau is also an accomplished theater actor. Born in Kiel in 1928, he began his career in Lüneburg in 1948 and, after engagements in Lübeck, Düsseldorf (Deutsche Oper), Braunschweig, Hamburg (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) and Wuppertal, landed at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, where from1971/72 onwards he appeared alongside Rosel Zech in productions that included Der Pott, The Merchant of Venice and Little Man, What Now? This was the Zadek-Fassbinder era, the so-called “Faraday cage” period when it was never really clear which of the two was sitting inside and who was generating the lightning. It was in the canteen of the Schauspielhaus that RWF made a pact with Vosgerau involving the 1972/73 theater production Bibi based in the work of Heinrich Mann and a lead role in the two-part film WORLD ON A WIRE Fassbinder was planning to make for the German TV broadcaster WDR. Shooting for the latter started in April 1973, with Vosgerau starring as the wonderfully malicious Herbert Siskins. This is an actor for whom timing is not something to be learnt. It is simply a feeling – for which he has a wonderfully refined sense.
His journey through New German Film continued in Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM (1975). In 1985 he played Lord Denver in Jiří Menzel’s CHOCOLATE COP.
For the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation it is of course particularly significant that Karl-Heinz Vosgerau also worked on EIGHT HOURS ARE NOT A DAY in 1972. We warmly congratulate Karl-Heinz on his birthday, with or without the hyphen.
More information
Karl Heinz Vosgerau’s filmography can be found at filmportal.de
Photos: © RWFF