"For Heaven's sake" actress Karin Gregorek has died

Film and television actress Karin Gregorek has died. As the German Press Agency learned on Monday from Gregorek's environment, she died in the night from Friday to Saturday in Berlin. She was 81 years old. Gregorek often appeared in TV supporting roles. The Berlin native was known to a wide television audience as Sister Felicitas Meier from the ARD ratings hit "Um Himmels Willen" (2002-2021). She was also very often seen in the ZDF family series "Tierarzt Dr. Engel" and also had appearances in the ARD crime thrillers "Polizeiruf 110" and "Tatort".

Gregorek had come to her profession as an actress rather by chance, as she said in an interview: "When a friend went to the drama school in Berlin to audition, I just came along. I was accepted, my girlfriend was not," she told the pharmacy magazine "Senioren Ratgeber" in 2019. At the time, her parents' career aspirations were anything but well received.

The actress, who was born in Mecklenburg, was already successful in theater, film and television during the GDR era. She had her first cinema role in 1963 in the Defa film "Christine", which was never completed due to the death of director Slatan Dudow during filming. In the decades that followed, she appeared again and again in film and television productions of the Defa and the DFF. As head nurse Walburga in Lothar Warneke's drama "One carries the other's burden..." In 1988 she received the award in the category "Best Supporting Actress" at the National Feature Film Festival of the GDR.

Her greatest audience success, with more than seven million viewers in some cases, was the long-running hit "Um Himmels Willen", in which Gregorek had already been involved since 2002. Felicitas Meier, the deputy superior of the Order of St. Magdalene, was a popular figure with various weaknesses, including tobacco, computer games, chocolate and poker. When Gregorek agreed to play the part of the nun in the ARD series, the habit of the order also played a role for her: "I thought it would be faster in the make-up and wardrobe." A mistake: The nuns would of course still be made up thoroughly. Despite the costume, she was recognized on the street. "It's strange."