Wolfgang Petersen's friend Klaus Doldinger remembers the Hollywood director: "He had music in his heart"

Created: 08/17/2022, 16:26

By: Katja Kraft

More than just colleagues: Wolfgang Petersen (1941-2022) and Klaus Doldinger (right) were good friends.

© Schneider-Press/Frank Rollitz

The international film world is shaken: the German Hollywood director Wolfgang Petersen is dead. Musician Klaus Doldinger composed the music for "Das Boot" or "The Neverending Story" for him.

Here he remembers his friend Wolfgang Petersen.

life is finite.

But stories, stories are endless.

In 1984, Wolfgang Petersen filmed the best-known “Neverending Story” of all, that of Michael Ende.

And, as so often, worked together with the composer Klaus Doldinger.

The day after Wolfgang Petersen's death became known, the musician from Icking, not far from Lake Starnberg (Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district), expressed his concern in an interview with our newspaper.

Because he and the director had more in common than the professional collaboration.

"Because our women got along very well, it was a real friendship," says Doldinger.

Petersen's wife Maria Antoinette, to whom he was married for 50 years, was with him when he died.

Great love: Wolfgang Petersen and his wife Maria, they have been married since 1978.

© Schneider-Press/John Farr

Klaus Doldinger likes to think back to the time when Wolfgang Petersen had not yet disappeared to Hollywood but was making film history in Germany.

For example, "One of Us Two" in 1973, Petersen's first feature film.

Or "Das Boot", 1981. Also because of Doldinger's compositions, the epic is still a timelessly strong piece about the horror of war - and an appeal for peace.

Then, of course, "The Neverending Story".

This insane project with a budget of more than 50 million German marks - and thus the most expensive German post-war production up to that point in time.

Actually, Helmut Dietl should have directed it.

When he got out, Petersen took over.

A man who wasn't afraid of the big bang.

The enthusiastic inspirer even managed to

Classic: Atréjus (Noah Hathaway) rode the lucky dragon Fuchur from Wolfgang Petersen's adaptation of the "Neverending Story".

© Bavaria Film

"It was all a bit difficult," Doldinger also remembers the faltering history leading up to the film adaptation.

But what immediately slipped was the music.

The organizers had a clear idea from the start: it should be a large orchestra.

“With choir and what do I know.

So bombastic,” says the 86-year-old composer.

"And Petersen was always very imaginative in designing the images that later came true in the film." The imaginative director described to Doldinger the brilliant views, the dreamlike quality that he wanted to create on the screen - also acoustically.

“After these descriptions I wrote the first composition.

He came here to Icking, I played what I had in mind on the piano.

This was exactly Wolfgang Petersen's great strength: his sense of music.

He carried her in his heart.

“He had a strong musical streak that enabled him to think at the same level as the composer.

That doesn't happen very often with directors." He has always tuned in to the musicians' wavelength and recognized what moves them.

Film epic: Wolfgang Petersen's "Das Boot" with (from left) Klaus Wennemann, Jürgen Prochnow and Herbert Grönemeyer.

© United Archives Impress

The fact that the native East Frisian then moved to the USA in the mid-1980s was something his old German companion could never really understand.

"I couldn't understand why he set himself up in the American direction while I was always firmly anchored in my homeland." At the same time, that was also typical of Petersen.

"Among the directors I knew, he was an outstanding personality that you don't usually see on the German scene.

And had success with it.

It was a pleasure."

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In Germany in 2016 he staged a remake based on his own template from 1976: the crook comedy "Four Against the Bank".

Of course - he didn't do it underneath - with a star cast: Til Schweiger, Matthias Schweighöfer, Jan Josef Liefers and Michael Herbig.

It was the last chapter of a finite story.