Götz George – Great love Sardinia

Sardinia has something very special. Götz George felt the same way, because he once said to journalists: "I think of death in a completely neutral way. Only in Sardinia do I say: it's a shame that at some point I won't have this solitude, this horizon anymore. These are the moments when death creeps in. But then I think: that rock has been there for thousands of years, only I will be gone."

Next door to Götz George?

Now Schimanski is gone, and I remember a decades-long neighbourhood in which I only spoke to my neighbour once. It began when my cleaning lady told me that she now looked after the property of an ‘attore tedesco’ ‘very close by’. She couldn't tell me the name, but she was certain it was a ‘persona molto famosa’.

Since nothing stays hidden from anyone in Sardinia, I soon learned that it was Götz George who had bought a dacha in the hinterland of San Teodoro. A little later, sometime in November, he was sitting in the otherwise completely empty tavernetta with two reporters at the neighbouring table. I was torn. At the neighbouring table! Would he have time for a chat with me? ‘My name is Wassmann, Mr George, and I live very close to you. Pleased to meet you.’ That's more or less how I had imagined striking up a conversation.

But it didn't happen. Götz George was – at least it seemed to me – so engrossed in conversation with the two reporters that I didn't have the courage to interrupt him. I had already imagined how things would unfold in my mind. I would have done this and I would have done that... I would have presented him with a thousand good ideas! But it remained at the ‘would have’ stage.

Götz George in Sardinia: Please do not disturb And that is how it has remained to this day. The brief encounter taught me that there was one thing Götz George particularly did not want in Sardinia: to have to deal with fellow countrymen and fans. That made sense to me. It was also important to me to be among Sardinians in Sardinia. He obviously felt the same way, and I wanted to respect that.

But I often ran into him on the island after that. And of course I told my friends in my neighbourhood about the acting legend and basked in the admiration that his celebrity status brought me. My daughter was also enthusiastic about Götz George and insisted that I get her an autograph. This circumstance led to my only personal encounter with my neighbour. Once, when we were waiting together at the gate in Tegel for our flight to Sardinia, I plucked up the courage to ask him for his signature. He coolly referred me to his companion. She pulled a signed photo card out of her bag and handed it to me with dismissive indifference.

Sardinia, Berlin, Lake Wannsee and Götz George again and again

‘You could have been friendly,’ I thought to myself disappointedly. ‘If I have respected your privacy unwaveringly until now, you could at least honour that now.’ But how could he know that? And how could he know that we were neighbours not only in Sardinia, but also in Berlin? At the time, I lived in Wannsee, less than 100 metres from the house where he had experienced the end of the war in 1945.

In his film ‘George,’ he recounts this period of his life. It is impressive how he pays tribute to his father, bowing before him and acknowledging that he, G.G., never achieved his father's acting stature. In the film, he also recounts his father's death in the Soviet special camp at Sachsenhausen. He does not mention that many years later he had his father's remains searched for there so that they could be buried in the Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin. Is there any better proof of a child's love?

The scene at the airport with him showed me how undesirable it must have been for this refined spirit to be so well known, and how right I had been to leave him alone. Let's leave it at that.

He spoke from my heart: That rock there has been there for thousands of years, only you are gone. Rest in peace!

With a Sardinian ‘Adioso’, I bid you farewell.

Joachim Waßmann

Actor Götz George, who made television history as Inspector Schimanski in the crime series Tatort, died on 19 June 2016 in Hamburg at the age of 77.