Horst Tappert - Biography

Biography

Tappert was born on 26 May 1923 in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal), Germany. His father was a civil servant. Following high school, Tappert was drafted into the German army in World War II and ended up as a prisoner of war. Following the war, he was hired as a bookkeeper at a theatre in Stendal, Germany, and became interested in acting. He took acting classes and gave his stage debut in Stendal, playing Dr. Stribel in Paul Helwig's Die Flitterwochen.

In the following years, he changed employers several times and, in 1956, started working at the Kammerspiele, Munich. An independent actor since 1967, he worked as an actor until he died.

In the late 1950s, Tappert started taking part in movie and television productions. His big breakthrough was in 1966 with the three-part television show Die Gentlemen bitten zur Kasse, in which he played post office robber Michael Donegan. In 1968, he changed sides by playing Scotland Yard detective Perkins in Edgar Wallace movies. When the second public television station in Germany, the ZDF, started planning a new mystery series with a different type of investigator in 1973, he was chosen for the character of detective Stephan Derrick, with sidekick assistant Harry Klein (played by Fritz Wepper).

The character of Stephan Derrick became a cult figure. The series was licensed in 104 countries and was popular with the Chinese, Japanese, and Italians (and even Pope John Paul II). The last of 281 episodes was filmed in 1998, when Tappert reached his self-imposed age limit of 75 years for being a television actor.