Actor, presenter and author Dietmar Schönherr has died during the night Friday July 18th at the age of 88 on the Spanish island of Ibiza, where he had lived during the last few years. Known to a wide audience of Austrians from 1966 for his starring role in the first and to date the most popular German science fiction television series "Space Patrol - the Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion". Later Schönherr hosted, among others, with his wife Vivi Bach the TV show "Make a Wish" since 1973, the first talk show on German television "The later the evening." He appeared in over 100 movies and hundreds of television productions, countless theaters, and worked as a voice actor, writer and director.
Even more important than his artistic work Schönherr was his social commitment. After the early 1980s, he supported the German peace movement, he was active mainly in Nicaragua. In the Central American country, which is among the poorest in the world, he built together with the poet Ernesto Cardenal in the city of Granada, the "Casa de los Tres Mundos", a cultural center for children and adolescents.
The house is one of the best-known institutions of its kind in Central America and is considered a model project for cultural development cooperation. To finance the project, Schoenherr created a Foundation in1994 called the club Pan y Arte. Its name ("Bread and Art") goes back to a quote of Schönherrs: "Bread and art are the main food of man. We take care of both."
When the club took over and initiated Pan y Arte it helped many other projects in Nicaragua. After the devastating Hurricane Mitch in autumn 1998 Schönherr formulated a flash appeal in the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit". Using the then incoming donations, the club was able to build the new village of Los Ángeles in Malacatoya and thus gave more than 1,300 people a roof over their head.
SCHONHERR, Dietmar (Dietmar Otto von Schönleiten)
Born: 5/17/1926, Innsbruck, Austria
Died: 7/18/2014, Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain
Dietmar Schönleiten’s westerns – voice actor:
Shatterhand – 1963 [German voice of Gustavo Rojo]
Black Eagle of Santa Fe - 1965 [German voice of Joachim Hansen]
By Way of the Stars (TV) - 1992 (Friedrich Brunneck)