Actor Bernd Herzsprung: “This is how I stay mentally fit”

Actor Bernd Herzsprung (81) can’t calm down. Shortly before Christmas, the TV star had to go to the hospital. During a clinic check-up, “something worrying happened, I had to go to the toilet and there was blood in my urine,” he reflects in an interview with “Bunte” magazine.

“Back in the hospital four days before Christmas”

In the urology department, “an ultrasound revealed something in the bladder” that didn’t belong there, Herzsprung reports of the “frightening” moment. He then spent “the four days before Christmas back in the hospital.” “I really wanted to have it clarified, it could have been cancer.” But fortunately the doctors were apparently able to give the all-clear. The shadow turned out to be a bladder stone that could be removed.

Since then, the Hamburg native has been recovering in his adopted home on Lake Tegernsee and trying to get fit again. In 2022 he had to undergo heart surgery and a stent was inserted due to a narrowing in the coronary system.

Bernd Herzsprung: “I leave little room for loneliness”

However, Herzsprung currently has to do without his partner, pilot Özlem Schäfer (48). “We haven’t seen each other for months,” he says of the woman he has been dating for 19 years. Her job obviously gets in the way of spending time together. “She lives in Malta, trains pilots there, travels around the world, she is completely absorbed in her job,” says Bernd Herzsprung with understanding. “We talk on the phone all the time, and she was very sorry that she couldn’t support me during the difficult time,” he says, adding that he would also “like to be more at her side in her stressful everyday life.”

However, the popular actor firmly opposes loneliness: “I leave little room for loneliness, I defend myself against it.” His sociability comes in handy. “I’m still interested in everything, I like to have arguments, that’s how I stay mentally fit,” says Herzsprung.

Still no new place to stay

To make matters worse, Herzsprung is still looking for a new place to live after his rented house was terminated after 30 years due to an heir’s personal use. But his contacts help him here too. “Everyone here now knows, from the postman to the innkeeper, that I’m looking for a new place to stay. I hope something comes up soon,” he says, summing up the state of things – and here too he is positive: “It’s in my life “It’s always continued somehow.”

Bernd Herzsprung became a star in the 1960s

Bernd Herzsprung became one of the most famous German TV faces from the late 1960s. He appeared in numerous television formats, including “The Inspector”, “Derrick”, “A Case for Two” and “Tatort”. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s he played the police officer Fred Leß in the ZDF series “SOKO 5113”. He became known to a younger audience in 2011 through his participation in the RTL show “Let’s Dance”.

The actor was married to designer Barbara Engel (71) from 1979 to 2008, with whom he had two daughters. One of the two is the actress Hannah Herzsprung (42). He also has an illegitimate son who was born in 1992.