Manfred Krug

Life and work

Krug was born in Duisburg in 1937. After moving to East Germany at the age of 13, Krug worked at a steel plant before beginning his acting career on the stage and, ultimately, in film. By the end of the 1950s he had several film roles, and in 1960 he appeared in Frank Beyer's successful war movie Fünf Patronenhülsen (Five Cartridges). Many more film roles followed, with Krug often cast as a socialist hero. Krug also achieved notability as a popular jazz singer, often in collaboration with composer Guenther Fischer.

In 1976 the East German government (GDR) forbade Krug to work as an actor and singer because he participated in protests against the expulsion and stripping of GDR citizenship of Wolf Biermann. On 20 April 1977 he requested to leave the GDR and as soon as he got the approval he left the GDR and moved to Schöneberg in West Berlin.

After moving back to West Germany he very soon got new roles as an actor but very rarely sang in public for a long time. In 1978 Krug appeared as one of the male leads of the action-drama television series Auf Achse, and would continue to appear on the series until 1995, one year before the show ended its long run. Krug's various television roles even included a two-year stint on the children's program Sesamstraße, the German version of the American children's program Sesame Street. In the 1980s and 1990s, he also starred as Hauptkommissar Paul Stoever in the Tatort series of TV crime movies, which would eventually run for forty installments in total. He died on 21 October 2016 in Berlin.

Awards

Discography

Literature