The actor Uwe Kockisch is dead. As his agency informed the dpa, he died on Monday in Madrid at the age of 81. The actor, born in Cottbus in 1944, is known, among other things, for his role as Commissario Brunetti in the ARD film adaptations of the Donna Leon crime novels. Kockisch took over the role from Joachim Król in 2003 and played the inspector until the end of the popular television series in 2019.
Kockisch also worked in the series Zappek (1995) and Weissensee (2010–2018) with. The latter is about the story of an East Berlin family, Kockisch played the Stasi man Hans Kupfer. He became representative of the ensemble in 2011 with the German television award excellent.
In prison for trying to escape from the GDR
Kockisch trained at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts. He was also often seen on the theater stage: his first engagement was in the Cottbus City Theater. At the beginning of the 1980s he went to the Berlin Maxim Gorki Theater in what was then East Berlin. He was a member of the ensemble there for 20 years.
Parallel to his theater career, he began his film career in the 1970s. In his roles, Kockisch repeatedly dealt with the GDR past.
In 1961, at the age of 17, Kockisch tried to flee the GDR across the Baltic Sea. However, the attempt failed: Kockisch subsequently had to spend around a year in prison. He later described this experience as valuable for his career as an actor.
Kockisch was married for the third time and lived in Madrid and Berlin.
