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Ernst Jacobi in the role of "AA" in "Emigrants"
Photo: Istvan Bajzat / dpa
He was known for difficult character roles, mainly on television and in the theatre.
Now the actor Ernst Jacobi is dead. He died at the age of 88, as his management told the German Press Agency.
He fell asleep peacefully.
According to "Bild", Jacobi died in a nursing sanatorium, so his wife Barbara was by the actor's side until the end.
Jacobi, who was born in Berlin and lived in Munich, played, among other things, the role of Gauleiter Löbsack in Volker Schlöndorff's Grass adaptation »The Tin Drum«.
He was also the narrator in Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon.
You never saw him in funny roles.
"Yes, people just find me difficult," he said in an interview with "BR-alpha" around 2008.
He doesn't think he's complicated at all.
In the interview, he explained that he kept playing the difficult characters: »Either people had a very good eye and thought that I should actually be able to do it, that I would do it;
I don't know how they saw it.
Or it was simply an experiment that they said: Well, let's try that out now.
And then it went well and suddenly you had a specialist for such roles.«
Education in Berlin and Paris
Jacobi began his career in the theater in the 1950s.
After graduating from high school, he completed his acting training in Berlin, and later also took classes in Paris.
From Berlin he was drawn to the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Schauspielhaus in Zurich.
He was also seen on television for decades: he embodied well over 200 TV roles, some in crime series such as »Derrick« or »Tatort«.
A few years ago he appeared in smaller roles, for example in "Rote Rosen".
He played his last role in 2017 in "Polizeiruf 110", since then he has lived in seclusion.
ime/sak/dpa
