With “Kottan determined”, Patzak set a milestone in the history of German-language television crime.
Now the Austrian director has died at the age of 76.
Our obituary.
The director Peter Patzak was born on January 2, 1945 in Vienna.
His crime series “Kottan determined” became a TV cult.
Now the filmmaker has died at the age of 76 after a heart operation.
“There is no inspector!” That was the motto of Adolf Kottan, the most famous policeman Austria has ever produced.
Because the "Dolferl", which between 1976 and 1983 both disturbed and enthusiastic TV viewers between Vienna and Wuppertal, was a real major.
And now there is no longer just an inspector - there is also no longer a "Kottan investigates" director.
Peter Patzak, who staged the gorgeous anarchic investigation madness, has now died at the age of 76 in the Krems hospital, apparently after a heart operation.
"Kottan determined" would probably provoke a shit storm today
The Vienna security office and all Kottan fans are in mourning.
Together with the author Helmut Zenker, who died in 2003, Patzak came up with a crazy world of police officers that is unthinkable today.
Police chief Pilch and the vicious coffee machine, the one-legged assistant Schremser, the UFO landing in Duisburg and Adolf Kottan, whose first name alone was a provocation in musty post-war Austria - the shitstorm that would break out on the series today bad smelling.
At that time, broadcasters (from 1980 also ZDF) and editors dared to do such an adventurously absurd and politically malicious police parody.
“I was never interested in the normal investigative commissioner,” said Patzak, looking back on his Kottan, whom the ORF put into retirement in 1983, even though the books for episodes 20 to 25 were already finished.
General director Gerd Bacher, like Zenker's son Jan, “assassinated” the series in order to make himself dear to the Viennese politics.
Peter Patzak was himself the son of a police major
Professor Peter Patzak, himself the son of a police major, later also excelled as a theater director, as a writer and painter.
The Viennese could do so much more than "just" play jokes with three different Kottan actors (Peter Vogel, Franz Buchrieser and Lukas Resetarits).
For his work he has received the directing award at the Venice Biennale and the Max Ophüls award.
If Patzak and Zenker now meet up somewhere up there with their long-dead actors from Kurt Weinzierl to Walter Davy and C. A. Tichy, it will hopefully be entertaining to anarchic again.
And maybe the heavenly machine will finally spit out coffee voluntarily.
