Horst Tappert
Horst Tappert (26 May 1923 – 13 December 2008) was a German film and television actor best known for the role of Inspector Stephan Derrick in the television drama Derrick.
Horst Tappert

Engelbert Reineke · Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F034159-0018 / Engelbert Reineke / CC-BY-SA 3.0 · This image was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv) as part of a cooperation project. The German Federal Archive guarantees an authentic representation · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
- Born
- 1923. · Elberfeld.
- Died
- 2008. · Planegg.
- Nationality
- Germany.
- Occupation
- actor and film director.
- Honours
- Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Romy, Bavarian TV Awards, Bambi Award, Goldene Kamera and Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
- Languages
- German.
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Documentary summary
Horst Tappert (26 May 1923 – 13 December 2008) was a German film and television actor best known for the role of Inspector Stephan Derrick in the television drama Derrick.
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Note VALÉORINE
Horst Tappert (1923–2008) was a German actor, film actor and film director, among other activities. Born in Elberfeld, the actor died in Planegg. Horst Tappert lived in Gräfelfing.
Languages used include German. The actor received Bambi Award, Bavarian TV Awards and Goldene Kamera, among others.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
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wikidata · Q61608 · wikipedia · Horst Tappert
In this article
Biography
Biography
Horst Tappert was born on 26 May 1923 in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal), Germany. His father, Julius Tappert (1892–1957), was a civil servant; his mother was Ewaldine Röll Tappert (1892–1981). Following high school and at the age of 17, Tappert was drafted into the German Army during World War II. Aged 19, he was, according to his widow against his will, transferred from the Army to the Waffen-SS, where the author of the Derrick series, Herbert Reinecker, had also served. Initially a member of a reserve anti-aircraft unit in Arolsen, he was listed as a grenadier with the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf in March 1943. In 1945, he was briefly a prisoner of war in Seehausen, Altmark. Following the war, he was hired as a bookkeeper at a theatre in Stendal, Germany, and became interested in acting. He took acting classes and gave his stage debut in Stendal, playing Dr. Stribel in Paul Helwig's Die Flitterwochen. In the following years, he changed employers several times, and in 1956, started working at the Kammerspiele, Munich. An independent actor since 1967, he worked as an actor until he died. In the late 1950s, Tappert started taking part in movie and television productions. His big breakthrough was in 1966 with the three-part television show Die Gentlemen bitten zur Kasse, in which he played train robber Michael Donegan. In 1968, he changed sides by playing Scotland Yard detective Perkins in Edgar Wallace movies. In 1970–71, he co-starred in three crime dramas directed by Jesus Franco, She Killed in Ecstasy, The Deadly Avenger of Soho and The Devil Came from Akasava. When the second public television station in West Germany, the ZDF, started planning a new mystery series with a different type of investigator in 1973, he was chosen for the character of detective Stephan Derrick, with sidekick assistant Harry Klein (played by Fritz Wepper). The character Stephan Derrick became a cult figure. The series was licensed in 104 countries and was popular with audiences in China, Japan, and Italy (and even Pope John Paul II). The last of 281 episodes was filmed in 1998, when Tappert reached his self-imposed age limit of 75 years old for being a television actor.
Personal life
Personal life
Divorced twice, he last lived in Gräfelfing near Munich with his third wife, Ursula Pistor (married in 1957). He was the father of three children. Tappert enjoyed fishing and hunting. He had a summer holiday home on the coast of northern Norway, a country where he also became a popular visitor, as Derrick, as well as a private person. Tappert and his wife Ursula had a cabin in Hamarøy Municipality in Nordland from 1990 to 2008, when due to his age and failing health, they had to sell the cabin. His wife Ursula Pistor is also an actor, a graduate of the same acting school in Berlin as Ellinor Hamsun, daughter of Knut Hamsun. In interviews and his memoirs, Tappert did not elaborate on his World War II career, claiming to have served as a company medic in the Wehrmacht, after which he became a prisoner of war. In April 2013, he was revealed to have joined the 3. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Totenkopf, then deployed on the Eastern Front, in March 1943. Historian Jan Erik Schulte, an expert on the history of the SS, said that the circumstances of Tappert's membership in the SS and the question of whether he was pressured or coerced into joining remain unclear. Following the discovery of Tappert's service with the Waffen SS during the war, German broadcaster ZDF dropped all repeats of Derrick. Similarly, Bavaria's interior ministry said it was considering stripping the late actor of an honorary chief police inspector title awarded to Tappert in 1980. Tappert died on 13 December 2008 in Planegg, Germany at age 85.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
2008
Horst Tappert died at Planegg.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Gräfelfing.
Residences
Elberfeld.
Birth place
Planegg.
Death place
Books
Tappert, Horst (1999). Derrick und ich. Meine zwei Leben [Derrick and I. My two lives] (1st ed.). Munich: Heyne-Verlag. ISBN 3-453-15000-7.

Photo of grave of Horst Tappert
Henckensl

Die Hauptdarsteller (v.r.) Joachim Fuchsberger, Horst Tappert, Konrad Georg und Karin Hübner geben im Kaufhaus Weipert Autogramme.
Magnussen, Friedrich (1914-1987) · Stadtarchiv Kiel
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Schmidt, Ulrike. Horst Tappert ist tot!. Tz. 15 December 2008.
- 2.Tappert-Witwe: "Er war doch noch ein halbes Kind". Die Welt. 7 May 2013.
- 3.Stark, Florian. Zeitgeschichte: "Derrick" Horst Tappert war bei der Waffen-SS. Die Welt. 26 April 2013.
- 4.Rodek, Hanns-Georg. Derrick und sein Schöpfer, der SS-Offizier. Die Welt. 15 September 2011.
- 5.Stephen Thrower, Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco (2015)
- 6.German TV drops Derrick show over SS actor revelations. BBC News. 2013-05-02.
- 7.Nazi Secret: Report Reveals 'Derrick' Actor Was SS Member. Spiegel Online. 26 April 2013.
- 8.German actor Tappert, star of "Derrick dies age 85. Die Welt. 15 December 2008.
References
Citations
References
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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