RIP Erwin Berner

 

Actor and author Erwin Berner died in Berlin-Friedrichshain, Berlin, Germany on February 17, 2023. He was 69. The son of Erwin Strittmatter he wrote down his memories of his parents, Erwin and Eva Strittmatter, and of his childhood in Schulzenhof late – the confrontation with the "Schulzenhof system" determined his life. The eldest of three sons of the writer couple Eva and Erwin Strittmatter. At the age of 18, he dropped out of the extended secondary school in Rheinsberg against his father's will. He left his home farm in Schulzenhof in Brandenburg, where the family lived from 1954, next to the city apartment in Berlin's Stalinallee, "his father played the farmer and family patriarch and his mother pursued her lifelong dreams". He went to the Staatliche Schauspielschule Rostock. At this time, he adopted the stage name Erwin Berner – based on his great-grandmother's maiden name – in order to be able to live and work without prejudice. [5] Already during his acting studies he appeared in 1972 in a leading role in Gesichter im Zwielicht, a film of the series Polizeiruf 110, alongside Horst Drinda, before he played theater activities on stages in Freiberg, Weimar, Rudolstadt and Neustrelitz, especially in television productions of the German television (DFF). Berner appeared in only one Euro-western the 1987 television series ‘Prairie Scout in Mexico’in the role of Kaiser Maximilian.