The nun series was a long-running hit on ARD for almost 20 years, but it ended three years ago. Now a belated farewell has been celebrated. But some people were no longer able to be there.
Three years after the last episode of the ARD cult series “For Heaven’s Sake” was broadcast, the actors and the television team celebrated a grand reunion in Munich. “It’s a bit like coming home,” said actress Janina Hartwig (62) to the German Press Agency.
When the series ended in 2021, a farewell party was not possible due to the corona pandemic. That will now be rescheduled, she said. The team also wanted to remember the colleagues who can no longer celebrate with them: Karin Gregorek (who played “Sister Felicitas” in the series) died last year, Horst Sachtleben (“Bischoff Rossbauer”) died in May 2022, and Fritz Wepper, who had shaped the series for almost 20 years in the role of Mayor Wolfgang Wöller – 15 of them alongside Hartwig as Sister Hanna – died in March of this year.
She is celebrating the festival “with a tear in her eye,” Hartwig told the dpa. But she is happy “that we can think of Fritz together in this way.” She saw Wepper three days before his death – when his last wish, a final visit to the Circus Krone in Munich, was fulfilled. “We were just a cool couple in front of the camera,” she said.
And the whole team has grown close together over the years: “We have all been through thick and thin together,” said Hartwig. “Children were born, relatives died, there were separations, there were weddings.” But: “Of course, I will especially think of Fritz.”
It all started with “Sister Lotte”
Gaby Dohm (who played Mother Superior “Luise von Beilheim”) and Jutta Speidel (who played “Sister Lotte”), along with many others, also came to the reunion organized by the production company ndf. “I launched the series as Sister Lotte,” Speidel told the dpa. “I am, so to speak, the basis for this series.” She has fond memories of the beginnings and is still friends with many of the colleagues she met there.
“For Heaven’s Sake” was canceled after 20 seasons, with which the series reached an audience of millions – the last episode aired in June 2021. “We firmly believe that you should stop when things are at their best,” ARD said at the time to justify the decision.
“Um Himmels Willen” had been broadcast on Tuesday evenings on Das Erste since January 2002. Wepper was there from the beginning in the role of Wolfgang Wöller, mayor of the fictional town of Kaltenthal. The filming locations were Landshut and Niederaichbach in Lower Bavaria as well as Munich and the surrounding area. The ARD once called “Um Himmels Willen” one of “the most successful series on Das Erste”. It was long considered a ratings guarantee.
Source: Stern
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