Joachim Fuchsberger

Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger (pronounced [ˈjoːaxɪm ˈfʊksbɛʁɡɐ]; 11 March 1927 – 11 September 2014) was a German actor and television host, best known to a wide German-speaking audience as one of the recurring actors in various Edgar Wallace movies (often a Detective Inspector with Scotland Yard). In the English-speaking world, he was sometimes credited as Akim Berg or Berger.

Life and career

Fuchsberger was born in Zuffenhausen, today a district of Stuttgart, and was a member of the obligatory Hitler Youth. During World War II, at the age of 16, he was trained as a Fallschirmjäger, combat instructor and sent to the Eastern Front where he was wounded. He was captured in a hospital in Stralsund by the Red Army and came into Soviet captivity and later in American and British captivity. Because of this turbulent time of his youth in Second World War, he never obtained a school diploma. In 1946, he worked as a coal miner for the British in Recklinghausen. His nickname Blacky hails from that time.

After his release, he worked as an engineer for typesetting and printing machines in the family business and later in a publishing house in Düsseldorf. In 1949, he was advertising manager of the German Building Exhibition in Nuremberg. From 1950 to 1952, he was spokesman at the radio station in Munich and newsreel spokesman. In 1951, he married the pop singer Gitta Lind, from whom he divorced after two years. In 1954 he married the radio technician and actress Gundula Korte (born 24 March 1930), with whom he has a son. In the same year he had his breakthrough playing "Gunner Asch" in the three-part war film 08/15 film series, based on the novel by Hans Hellmut Kirst.