Pierre Brice died ten years ago: as Winnetou he became a legend

When Winnetou was reborn for the cinema, a miracle had to happen. So the great spirit from a Frenchman from the tribes of the Bretons formed the chief of the Apache. Even if it was not quite correctly politically.

It must have happened so much when the German producer Horst Wendlandt (1922-2002), at the time, a manitu of German film, supposedly on the advice of his little son, not always only filmed the thrillers of Edgar Wallace (1875-1932), but also sometimes the adventure novels of the Saxon writer (1842-1912). This Horst Wendlandt happened to have seen a young, beautiful Frenchman and immediately knew: this is my Winnetou!

That happened 63 years ago: Pierre Brice (1929-2015) became Winnetou. Although he died in 2015, he still lives in the hearts of many millions of fans. On June 6th, his day of death marks the tenth time.

This Pierre Brice became a legend by the Karl May films in the German-speaking countries. His life would also be worth a full -length film.

Actually, he is not called Pierre Brice, but Pierre Louis Baron Le Bris. He comes from an old nobility family and was born on February 6, 1929 in the Breton port city of Brest. The father is a naval officer and constantly at sea, the mother educates the boy and his older sister Yvonne strictly religiously and in the sense of a tight French patriotism.

Little Baron Pierre is eleven years old when German troops occupied France in the summer of 1940. The father fights against the enemy in the partisan movement Résistance, the son also follows the resistance at 15, and Botenjunge becomes between the individual Résistance groups. This requires a lot of courage, because if the Germans had caught the young Le Bris, he would have been shot.

After the end of the Second World War, Pierre Le Bris goes to the military, Froschmann (freely floating diver for military and emergency inserts) is transferred to Algeria for two years. This is followed by an apprenticeship as a paratrooper, he moves to the Indochina war in today’s Vietnam for four years. In 1951 he returned to civil life in France, highly decorated with three bravery medals. First of all, he misses the cohesion of soldier life, decades later he will say: “I never had as good friends as with the military again.”

He now wants to become an actor, the old Baron is irritated, his son should take a “decent profession”, but Pierre prevails. He takes acting lessons in Paris, is called Pierre Brice, but because the hoped -for engagements fail to fail, he sells types of typewrats, works as a model for photo novels, sometimes as a acrobatic dancer for an artist group.

In 1954 he got his first film job: In “Hard Fists – Hot Blood” he can stop the door in one scene to the popular leading actor Eddie Constantine (1917-1993). The first step is taken, theater appearances and real film roles follow. It is difficult to gain a foothold because a certain Alain Delon (1935-2024) has conquered the film scene. He is friends with Pierre Brice, and the two look similar, and there is no room for two Delons in France. So Pierre Brice works mostly in Italy and Spain.

In 1962 he was at the Berlinale in Berlin with his Spanish film “Los Atracadores”. There by chance he sees the producer Horst Wendlandt, who prepares his first Karl May film. The screenplay for “The Treasure in the Silver Lake” is ready, he has already found the actor for Old Shatterhand: the giant, blonde American Lex Barker (1919-1973), a Hollywood size, known from a number of Tarzan films. Wendlandt is now looking for the second main actor, Old Shatterhand’s blood brother Winnetou.

Karl May says about this figure: “His face was cut classy, ​​almost Roman, the color is a matt light brown with a bronze wave.” Then Horst Wendlandt sees the smooth Frenchman Pierre Brice – and he knows: the or none!

Brice is anything but enthusiastic about the offer. Should he play an Indian? These are those who always lose. A role according to the novels by Karl May? Never heard! It is too undemanding for him, and he cannot ride properly. Then he reads the French Winnetou edition – and is thrilled. Horst Wendlandt has his chief, 14 days later the shooting starts.

The two main actors must be synchronized in German. Pierre Brice is not convinced of the concept of the Karl May film, he doubts the success of the “sauerkraut western”, as the German films are called. But “The Treasure in the Silver Lake” attracts millions of visitors to the cinemas – the start of an incredible success series. Old Shatterhand and especially Winnetou become superstars – and friends for life.

“Brice not only grew into his role – he grew up with her. At the same time, he conquered young and old hearts of the German public”, the Winnetou “with the double migration background as a French Indian not only integrated, but not only adopted”, who sees a new need “of simple virtue motifs such as tolerance and honesty after the end of the post -war period”.

The clever, civilized Winnetou, who speaks little and always acts, corresponds to this need. “The optical attraction” with “blowing dark mane, headband and white tangled leather suit did the one in order to make him a pop star with cult status and idol of an entire generation.”

From 1962 to 1968 Pierre Brice embodied the noble Winnetou in eleven cinema films. The youth magazine “Bravo” takes him on the title 56 times, gives him the Otto award twelve times. He receives the first class Federal Cross of Merit, five Bambis, the golden camera, the French make him knight of the Legion of honor for his services to Franco-German friendship. The Berlin filmmaker Artur “Atze” Brauner (1918-2019) calls him lovingly: “Roter Baron”.

In 1965, his film death, which, according to the novel in “Winnetou III”, triggers mass protests, producer Wendlandt can only calm the angry people with the promise to resurrect the most popular Indian in Germany. So Pierre Brice continues, even in films that were not actually intended by Karl May, such as “Winnetou and the Halfblut Apanatschi” (1966).

Winnetou even has to sing. Overall, he picks up several plates, the first “I stand alone” came in third place in the Bravo charts in 1965, behind the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

When the Karl May films are finally over, Pierre Brice rides as Winnetou at the Karl May Festival in the Sauerland Elspe, then until 1991 in Bad Segeberg over the open-air stages. And in 1997 he played an old Winnetou who survived in the mountains in the ZDF two-part “Winnetous Return”.

Pierre Brice lives with his German wife Hella Krekel (75), with whom he has been together since 1976, in the Hunting Castle Domaine des Moinets in Crépy-en-Valois north of Paris. Then the couple wants to move to Bavaria, but there is no longer. On June 6, 2015, he died of pneumonia at the age of 86. At the funeral service in the St. Michael Jesuit Church in Munich, more than 1,000 people say goodbye, a day later he is buried in Gräfelfing near Munich.

The French Winnetou is now likely to ride through the eternal hunting grounds with his blood brother Old Shatterhand, because Lex Barker was already a heart attack in 1973 at the age of 54.