He founded the “new theater” in Halle, acted in Tatort and “Gundermann”. The gentle poltergeist Peter Sodann has died at the age of 87.
If there was something that really bothered us it was the injustice, the lack of empathy and the materialism of our time. Photo: Marc Müller/dpa
The old cabaret artist joked before his 80th birthday that he had made a date with God in a dream. “I would like to live to be 120 years old so I can bury everyone who has bothered me!” “Then you would have to live to be a thousand years old,” God responded. Either God didn't keep the agreement or there weren't so many problems after all. Last Friday the actor, theater director and book saver Peter Sodann died in Halle at the age of 87.
It was easy to anger Peter, but he could also do it the other way around. Everyone who has dealt with him privately, on stage or on set knows this. At times he, too, treated journalists like dirt, only to apologize warmly and resort to friendly gestures shortly afterwards. Anyone who doesn't want to wait could change their mind by reciting Brecht's poem about the poor and the rich or donate a rarity from his own book collection to the GDR library. Then his face, sometimes in a bad mood, began to light up.
Because if there was something that really bothered him, it was the injustice, the lack of empathy and the materialism of our time. As if surprised by himself, the working-class boy exposed his later approach to the social messages of the Christian gospel. Jesus was crucified because he expelled the bankers and usurers from the temple. “Today they still crucify people for this,” he said to the interlocutor with his usual apodictic tone.
The fact that he clashed with the GDR, which was called socialist, during the Ulbricht era, which was still influenced by Stalinism, speaks of his rigorously socialist basic convictions. From the support of the workers' children they derived a right to lifelong gratitude and loyalty to the SED State. Nothing for a second. As director of the Leipzig student cabaret “Rat der Spötter”, he was sentenced in 1961 to ten years in prison for “incitement posing a threat to the state”. He served ten months, then was allowed to prove himself in the production and even continue studying at the theater school.
The same GDR, which was no longer the same during the Gorbachev era, awarded the former “agitator” the National Prize in 1986. The Federal Republic received the Federal Cross of Merit in 2001 and in 2005 the city of Halle received honorary citizenship. This speaks of independent qualities of the system. Because everyone knew of his sympathies for the PDS. This independent party wanted to be Saxony's main candidate in the Bundestag in 2005 and even ran for the position of federal president in 2009.
Sodann revealed his qualities early on in the performing arts. Most people also know him as an actor. If in 1964 you were hired at the Berliner Ensemble right after finishing your studies, you had to have something on your plate. Erfurt, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Magdeburg and especially Halle followed. Founding the “new theater” there also meant getting involved with one's own hands and celebrating in a proletarian and cordial way.
Too often, Peter Sodann is reduced to his “crime scene” detective, Bruno Ehrlicher (1992-2007). Much more interesting are the paternal or boastful roles that show him as a comrade and official. His line fidelity tends to consist of zigzag lines or circles. For example in “Two Weird Birds” from 1989 or in his last veteran role in the film “Gundermann” by Andreas Dresen in 2018.
Like Don Quixote, not an epigone of the GDR, Peter Sodann fought for the “cultural good of books” after 1990, violently agitated by millions of senders of GDR literature who disrupted the celebration of the outbreak of the market economy . His GDR library is now a legend, but after a long odyssey he did not find a home in Gut Staucha until 2011, a few kilometers from his Saxon hometown of Meißen.
The first tributes to the deceased came from left-wing state associations. But Peter Sodann would not have run for him for a long time. What bothers him too much about the party, just as it bothers him about the West after 1990, is the devaluation of the ideals that have shaped it. “I will not let them take my past away from me,” he declared on his 85th birthday.