Actor and journalist Lutz Riemann. Photo: dpa
From BZ/dpa
The actor and journalist Lutz Riemann is dead.
Riemann died on Monday in a hospital in Greifswald at the age of 82, as his publisher Frank Schumann confirmed to the dpa in Berlin on Wednesday, citing the family circle.
Riemann was best known for his role as Lieutenant Zimmermann in the television series “Polizeiruf 110”, for which he appeared in front of the camera from 1983 to 1991. Riemann, who was born in Stettin, initially worked in shipbuilding before joining an amateur group to study acting in Potsdam and Berlin. He then gained stage experience in places like Meiningen and Weimar. After reunification, Riemann worked as a journalist in the northeast.
As an employee of the GDR state security, Riemann not only spied on those around him in Thuringia, but also on the SPD politician and later candidate for chancellor Peer Steinbrück, with whom he was distantly related by marriage.
There were also points of contact with another politician from West Germany. As a shipbuilder, Riemann heard contributions from the then journalist Egon Bahr. Riemann met the later architect of the SPD’s Eastern policy after the fall of the Wall. They communicated intensively and sailed together on the Baltic Sea. The exchange is documented in the joint volume “Approaching through Change. Cold War and Late Friendship” (East Edition of the Eulenspiegel Publishing Group).