Biography:

Rolf Römer was born as Rolf Specht in Königswinter, Germany, on September 20, 1935. After completing an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, he studied acting at the Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. While still a student, he played small parts in DEFA films, but he soon progressed to leading parts in East German Westerns. He gave an unforgettable performance as Wildtöter in Richard Groschopp’s Chingachgook - Die große Schlange.

Römer usually played a lanky man with criminal nuance, which gained him popular appeal. As Al in Jürgen Böttcher’s documentary-style feature-film, Jahrgang 45, he gave a particularly impressive performance and received praise for his role at the 1990 Berlin International Film Festival, where the film was screened after being banned for a quarter of a century. For a time, Römer was a permanent member of the DEFA ensemble. From the late 1960s, he also wrote film scripts and directed two of his own screenplays. His film Hostess was particularly well received by the public.

After he protested against the forced expatriation of Wolf Biermann in 1976, and because he wrote, directed, and starred in an episode of the television crime series Polizeiruf 110: Schuldig, which was considered to be critical of the East German state system, Römer was offered very few film roles from the 1980s onwards. In the 1990s, he directed a few documentary films.

Römer was married to the actress Annekathrin Bürger, whom he met as a student at the Academy for Film and Television, and who played the leading parts in most of his filmed screenplays. Rolf Römer died in a tragic accident in Berlin on March 14, 2000.