The actor and director Walter Niklaus is dead. As MDR KULTUR learned from his wife and daughter, he died last Saturday at the age of 96 in Söllichau, a district of Bad Schmiedeberg.
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Staging genius and voice magician
In addition to many theater, television and dubbing roles, Niklaus shaped East German radio drama as the leading director of the Leipzig radio play production from 1964 to 1990. He worked with many well-known actors such as Rolf Hoppe, Kurt Böwe, Jutta Wachowiak, Jürgen Hentsch and Sylvester Groth.
Matthias Thalheim, MDR radio play director until 2020, paid tribute to his “unusually charismatic radio voice and rare staging genius” in his obituary. Niklaus had “brought all facets of the spoken word to effect with music, noise and precisely set pauses and never lost sight of the addressing of a broad audience”.
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Popular hits “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “Countess Cosel” and “The Popess”
Walter Niklaus, born in Cologne in 1925, was initially on the theater stage in Erfurt, Cottbus, Schwerin and Leipzig. With his distinctive voice, he later gave many historical television films an unmistakable narrative tone, for example in the Fallada films “Wolf Among Wolves”, “Little Man, What Now?” or in the DEFA multi-part series “Sachsens Glanz und Preussens Gloria”.
He remained loyal to radio well into old age and staged numerous radio plays for MDR KULTUR, which were also popular with audiences as audio books – among many others: “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “Countess Cosel” and “The Popess”.
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