Actor Jörg Hartmann remembers his sensitive father

Actor Jörg Hartmann appreciates his father for being a sensitive person with good intuition. "He was not a typical representative of his generation. He didn't have a shell, he had access to his feelings," said the actor, who is known for his roles in the Dortmund crime series, at the Leipzig Book Fair on Thursday. In his book "Der Lärm des Lebens" (The Noise of Life), Hartmann, who was born in Hagen in 1969, talks about the lives of his parents and his deaf grandparents, among other things.

He had the idea to write a book when his father was already suffering from severe dementia, Hartmann told Deutschlandradio in an interview. At the time, he felt the need to record memories of his father. "I had many touching, beautiful, but also sad moments with him shortly before his death." When his father died, he was on a shoot - although he had promised the dementia sufferer that he would be there when he died, the actor said.

Hartmann also attributes the fact that he himself was drawn to the stage to his father. He was a lathe operator and later also a janitor in a sports hall and at the same time - just like Hartmann himself - was "ramp-suicidal and clownish". However, due to his parents' deafness, his father also learned to always listen to his feelings and intuition, "because language was not an issue", says Hartmann.

While he has been at home in front of the camera and on stage for years, Thursday was Hartmann's first time at a book fair - although he is "a big bookworm".