Karin Baal is dead: she was the German answer to Brigitte Bardot

The actress Karin Baal is dead. She died on Tuesday in Berlin at the age of 84, her children told the German Press Agency. “She has shaped a generation and will not be forgotten. She is leaving a huge hole – not just in our family, but in Berlin and all of Germany,” said Therese Lohner and Thomas Baal, the actress’s children, on Saturday.

Baal became known in the 1950s with “The Half-Strongs”. The black and white film tells of several young people in post-war Berlin, their living conditions and criminal activities.

When Baal was hired for the film, she was still a teenager herself. She was born in Berlin in 1940 and later began training as a fashion illustrator. From among hundreds of applicants, she was finally hired for “Die Halbstarken”, in which Horst Buchholz also starred. Baal took on the female lead role of Sissy. The film became a classic of German post-war cinema – and Baal was later celebrated as the German answer to Brigitte Bardot.

Afterwards she was seen in a number of films and series. These include “The Girl Rosemarie”, “We Cellar Children” and “The Young Sinner”. She also appeared in Edgar Wallace films and in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz”. She also had roles in series such as “Liebling Kreuzberg” and “Schwarzwaldklinik”. She was also seen more often in TV crime dramas – such as “Tatort”.

Baal also repeatedly experienced crises and low blows. Two marriages failed and her third husband died of cancer. In 2000 she married the Kurdish actor Cevdet Celik, who was 30 years her junior and was threatened with deportation. The relationship fell apart.

In 2018, Baal was honored for her life’s work with the inaugural Götz George Prize. At the time, the Götz George Foundation honored Baal as a “great actress and admirable woman.” It was said at the time that she opened up to her characters relentlessly and with touching devotion, thereby making even the finest nuances of their wide range of emotions visible.

In pictures from recent years, Baal was seen in a wheelchair. She was an alcoholic and suffered from depression. In 2010 she said: “I’ve been sober for twelve years now. It’s been a difficult journey, a valley with a lot of tears.” They were also plagued by financial worries. “I never paid into my pension. I wanted to live and have fun. Everything else didn’t matter. When I think about it, I could be a wealthy woman today – if I had done everything right,” Baal told the magazine “Das Neue” .

Even though in old age she repeatedly thought about moving to Vienna to be with her daughter, the actress lived in Berlin until the end, as her daughter Therese Lohner said. “She loved Berlin too much and really wanted to stay in her beloved Charlottenburg.”