Corinna Harfouch – A New Tatort Detective
Image credit: rbb/Marcus Glahn
Written by: Asja Makarević
The viewers of the popular German crime series Tatort, the Berlin edition, eagerly anticipate new episodes which are to be shot this fall and broadcast in January 2024. One of the reasons is that the new actress impersonating the role of the investigator Susanne Bonard is 68-year old Corinna Harfouch.
Harfouch comes from the GDR and is one of the most accomplished and versatile German theatre and film actresses. She played at the Deutsches Theatre, the Volksbühne, the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz and the Berliner Ensemble. In the course of her career, she appeared in more that 100 TV and feature films, including several times in Tatort.
The award-winning role of Maria Rheine in the film The Actress /Die Schauspielerin (Dir. Siegfried Kühn, 1988), transformed her from a popular actress in the GDR into an international star, according to film scholar Victoria I. Rizo Lenshyn. The role assumed the transformation from the Nazi`s theatre star Maria Rheine to the Jewish woman Manya, the spouse and unknown actress of Maria`s lover, Mark Löwenthal. Her multi-layered performance made Kühn describe her as an “artist of metamorphosis” (“Verwandlungskünstlerin”). As a film star, Harfouch proved capable of embodying the paradox of “ordinary” and “extraordinary”, as conceptualised by film scholar Richard Dyer in his book “Stars”. At the same time, as Lenshyn suggests, “under socialism, a star’s unique social and cultural function included the embodiment of an ideal – a socialist personality – which both set stars apart while simultaneously demanding they appear accessible and thus identifiable to an East German public”. Harfouch balanced these expectations well while remaining approachable and yet retaining the allure of mystery, both in her acting and her star personality. Her more recent performances, like the one of Magda Goebbels in Downfall directed by Oliver Hirschbegel (2004) or the other of Lara, the toxic mother of a pianist and classical composer in Jan-Ole Gerster’s 2019 arthouse film discovery, earned her critical acclaim and nomination at the German Film Awards. Throughout her life, she has been honoured several times for her performances, by the German Film Awards, the German Actor Award, the Bavarian Film Prize and the Berlinale.
With such an impressive theatre and film career in hindsight, what made Corinna Harfouch finally accept the invitation to play a lead role in Berlin Tatort? The first case her character needed to solve involved conspiracy in right-wing circles. Bonard teaches at the police academy but switches to active police service to make up for momentous mistake. In an interview given to Der Standard, Harfouch admits that she finds exciting that an experienced woman with the advantages brought by an older age enters the actual police service. She comes from the academy as a teacher, but assumes the role of a student in investigation. Harfouch emphasises that her main tool in her role of an investigator is not the gun, but the conversation. She is quick, though, to make a point in the interview that in the fight against the right-wing extremism, one does not turn a blind eye. Neither in her role, nor in her private life. Through her Tatort role she also hopes to make a plea for female actresses over 40 to be hired at TV station. What’s more, she is determined not to play a sad wife whose husband is gone and everything falls apart simply because the children are out of house. She remains committed at no longer participating in such narratives. And the viewers can be thrilled about her decision and anticipate more-to-come exciting and multi-layered TV, film and theatre performances.
Reference list:
Baumman, Birgit. Neue “Tatort”-Ermittlerin Harfouch: “Ich spiele keine traurige Ehefrau mehr” –
https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000145316378/ich-spiele-keine-traurige-ehefrau-mehr
Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: British Film Institute, 1998.
Kuhn, Siegfried, “Verwandlung einer Schauspielerin. Siegfried Kuhn im Gespräch mit Dieter Wolf.” Film und Fernsehen. 10 (1988) 8-12.
Lenshyn, Victoria I. Rizo, “The Art of Corinna Harfouch – A Multifaceted Performance”
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