For 13 years he played in the “Tatort” from Saarbrücken. Hartmut Volle (69) is now investigating the “Retiree Cops” (Wednesdays 6:50 p.m., Das Erste).
But just like the retired TV commissioners, he doesn’t want to know anything about retirement despite his 69 years.
“I see myself as a good wine that matures and has more substance over time,” he says to BILD am SONNTAG. Volle looks back on an eventful life. Originally he wanted to be a carpenter. But shortly before the end of his training, he lost two fingers on his right hand in an accident at work.
Volle (M.) with Devid Striesow (49) and Elisabeth Brück (51) in the “crime scene” Saarbrücken
“I passed the journeyman’s examination successfully, but then I reoriented myself.” But instead of becoming a vocational school teacher, as suggested by the employment office, Volle preferred to become an actor.
His father wasn’t too keen on that at first, thinking actors were just “fucking around and drinking their money.” Hartmut Volle’s relationship with his father, a pastor, was difficult even when he was young. “I wanted long hair, he thought that was stupid. I was interested in football, he wasn’t. He liked to give out slaps.”
They are the “pensioner cops”: Bill Mockridge (left) and Hartmut Volle
Then there was an incident that had consequences. “I got money for the hairdresser, but I preferred to invest it in football stickers.” He lost the money, he lied at home.
“My father then hit me so hard that I ended up in the cloakroom between my coats. I went to the bathroom window and yelled out as loud as I could: ‘The priest hits his children!’ A scandal.
Volle was a “really tough dog” as a young man. He drove at 120 km/h with his eyes closed on the autobahn and tested other people’s courage.
“I was always at the fore at demonstrations, for example against nuclear power plants. As a result, my criminal record is quite long: breach of the peace, damage to property, bodily harm, resistance to state authority. The latter even put me in prison in Bielefeld for three days when I was 21.”
Today he is calmer, the focus is on his family. Volle has been married to colleague Andrea Wolf for 28 years and has a son Max (28) with her. The victim of a traffic accident in 2012 has been paralyzed from the waist down since then and has severe brain damage. “Suddenly nothing was the way it used to be,” says Hartmut Volle.
“My wife and I coped well with the situation together, although it remains devastating to this day. Max’s brain injury is massive. Little or nothing comes back from him. He didn’t get a good prognosis from the doctors. That is the sad reality.”
This article comes from BILD am SONNTAG. The ePaper of the entire issue is available here.
