Ingrid Fröhlich died at the age of 81. The trained midwife was the first TV commissioner on West German television and appeared in “SOKO 5113” and “Tatort”, among others.
She was the first West German TV commissioner: The actress Ingrid Fröhlich is dead. As the German press agency learned from family circles on Saturday, she died on Friday. Fröhlich was 81 years old. She had her first roles at the Volkstheater in Vienna and was seen in several television productions in the 1970s, including the popular ZDF series “Three are one too many”.
On January 2, 1978 she wrote a piece of West German television history when she appeared in the ZDF series “SOKO 5113” in the role of Renate Burger. She was the first female TV investigator on West German television, a few weeks before Nicole Heesters first appeared as “Tatort” commissioner. The GDR television had already had an investigator solve cases in 1971 with Sigrid Göhler as Lieutenant Vera Arndt.
Fröhlich did not consider herself a pioneer
At the time, she didn’t even think about being a pioneer, Fröhlich recalled in a dpa interview last year. Although almost only men investigated on the streets at the time, she did not encounter any prejudice on the set. “Back then, the scriptwriter just thought that it was time for a woman,” said Fröhlich, who lived in Wolfratshausen near Munich.
After a career as a theater actress in Vienna and Munich and many TV films, the “queen of the evening program” said she had big plans for her role: strong and at the same time “womanly” miming a policewoman, conducting tough investigations and questioning suspects. But the reality was disappointing for her: While her male colleagues hunted criminals with pithy slogans in the first episodes and sat smoking in the police station after nightly investigations, policewoman Burger was often left out.
“I was just a coffee maker and every woman was back then”
“Should I come with you?” She asks her colleague in one episode before an operation. “Too dangerous,” he simply replies. “You could have used this role back then, but I was just a coffee maker, and that was what every woman was back then,” said Fröhlich.
“Today I don’t even know how I got the role,” she once told the dpa. “First I got a role – and then, through a lot of happy little coincidences, another one, and so it went on and on.” Her acting career had actually started in the delivery room, because Fröhlich was a trained midwife. Her boss has repeatedly encouraged her to try herself as an actress: “The doctor said that I had an actress face.”
In 1978, Ingrid Fröhlich was unable to expand her best-known role as a TV police officer, despite her pioneering role. The actress drew the consequences – and left the “SOKO 5113” after 19 episodes. She only came back in 2018 for a guest appearance on the 40th anniversary of the series – as the main suspect.
After her TV career, Fröhlich moved to a very unusual industry. She and her son made globes very successfully. The company has since sold millions of globes in more than 40 countries.
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