As of: February 26, 2024, 9:30 a.m
By: Andrea Kästle
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He has been press spokesman at the State Criminal Police Office since 1996, and for 20 years he has also been advising authors who have questions about police work - because they are writing a crime novel: Ludwig Waldinger.
He says he doesn't care whether the writers are well-known or just beginning their careers.
Rita Falk was also one of his clients, as was Martin Arz, with whom he developed two stage programs.
Ludwig Waldinger started out, “like everyone,” as he says, as a patrol officer. For a time he was in the narcotics department and he also investigated organized crime.
Money laundering in Munich Teamwork instead of brilliant investigators © Andrea Kästle
“Deadproof Munich”: Ludwig Waldinger from Schäftlarn supports the reading with Martin Arz.
The chief inspector comments and classifies and answers questions from the audience.
Schäftlarn - There are now a few writing criminals, the best known in Munich was perhaps the former head of the murder squad, Josef Wifling, who has since died.
Ludwig Waldinger is also with the police; he, the chief inspector, also appears at readings - but he doesn't write himself. Rather, he comments and classifies what crime author Martin Arz has written and is also reading live.
He also answers questions from the audience, which is almost the most important thing to him.
On Thursday, February 29th, the two can be seen with their very special format “Fiction vs. Facts” in the Schäftlarn bookstore.
For Waldinger, who is responsible for the facts, it's a home game - he lives in the community.
Premiere of a new program in April in Erding
He reports that Arz and he have already performed together ten to 15 times. They have now written a second program, which will premiere in Erding in April.
The first program that they are now showing in Ebenhausen is based on Arz's book “Todsicheres München”, which reports on spectacular crimes that took place on the Isar.
They take up three of them on stage, once the case of Johann Eichhorn, who was “one of the most brutal serial killers in criminal history”;
He killed five young women before he, a NSDAP member, was finally caught at the end of the 1930s.
It's also about the "Panther Gang", a criminal organization that was active in Munich after the war, and finally about Adele Spitzeder, the "first really well-known major fraudster" in Bavaria, who also stole money from ordinary people at the end of the 19th century out of her pocket - with the promise to invest it for her and pay good interest.
In reality, the failed actress herself squandered bags of what gullible savers had entrusted to her.
To keep up appearances or to maintain her image as a benefactor, she bought a newspaper and set up a soup kitchen.
It also went up at some point.
Munich - a good place to launder money
Waldinger, who has worked in the press office of the State Criminal Police Office for 28 years and, as you quickly notice, loves his job, says that in all cases it is also about establishing a connection to the present.
What are the Spitzeders doing these days, how do they proceed?
“There are still just as many scams, today a lot of them are done over the Internet.” Then he tells you a little about the mafia, which of course also exists in Munich.
Munich, he reports and is visibly happy about the questions he is asked about it, is a good place to launder his money.
Running a car wash and booking lots of small individual amounts that were actually never received isn't a big deal.
Writers contact Waldinger to avoid capital errors in their books
When you talk to him, you don't know what you should be more interested in - the content of the program or your job.
The fact is that Waldinger, who says that he only went to the police because he was given two days off at school for the aptitude test and because he wanted to avoid the Bundeswehr, also has a lot of writers coming forward.
For their crime novel or the novel with a crime thriller element that they are writing, they need to know at least some of what the police are like.
“Major mistakes,” he says, “just have to be avoided.” A crime writer should already know who in the police department is responsible for what and how a Soko is structured.
The rest doesn't have much to do with reality anyway - "that would be incredibly boring."
When a murder is solved in Bavaria, which happens in 90 percent of all cases, it is not the success of the individual brilliant investigator, but the success of several departments working hand in hand.
He estimates that 300 to 400 authors have already gone through his school, which often only consists of a phone call.
Many then mention him in their acknowledgments in the book.
He himself, he says, would rather read crime novels than watch crime novels.
He likes Rita Falk, he is a “Hubert and Staller” fan simply because it is entertaining, and he also appreciates the East Frisian crime novels.
He also once advised an English author, Peter James, whose chief inspector had to deal with a case in Munich.
“We’re still in touch.”
No two readings with Martin Arz and Ludwig Waldinger are the same
Ludwig Waldinger, 57-year-old father of an adult daughter, says that working for the police is “incredibly diverse” and also crisis-proof: “It would be wrong to assume that all people are angels.”
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What he also likes about the evenings with Martin Arz is that no two readings are the same, the visitors want to know something different every time.
“It’s a challenge,” sometimes an evening takes a surprising turn.
Suddenly people who have become victims of a crime tell him about what they have suffered - and what has long since become statute-barred.
“Then I’m more in demand as a psychologist.”
Reading:
The event in the bookstore, Professor-Benjamin-Allee 2, begins on Thursday, February 29th, at 7:30 p.m.