Tatort

For the Swedish term for urban areas, see Tätort.

Tatort
Starring	Boris Aljinovic Dietmar Bär Meret Becker Elisabeth Brück Hansjörg Felmy Ulrike Folkerts Maria Furtwängler Götz George Stefan Gubser Jörg Hartmann Andreas Hoppe Klaus J. Behrendt Harald Krassnitzer Manfred Krug Jan Josef Liefers Eva Mattes Oliver Mommsen Richy Müller Axel Prahl Dominic Raacke Sieghardt Rupp Anna Schudt Devid Striesow Simone Thomalla Ulrich Tukur Mark Waschke Martin Wuttke Wotan Wilke Möhring and others
Theme music composer	Klaus Doldinger
Country of origin	West Germany (1970–1990) Germany (1990–present) Austria Switzerland
Original language	German
No. of seasons	50
No. of episodes	1,172 (as of 26 August 2021)
Production
Running time	90 minutes
Original release
Network	Das Erste
Release	29 November 1970 (1970-11-29) – present

Tatort ("Crime scene") is a German language police procedural television series that has been running continuously since 1970 with some 30 feature-length episodes per year, which makes it the longest-running German TV drama. Developed by the German public-service broadcasting organisation ARD for their channel Das Erste, it is unique in its approach, in that it is jointly produced by all of the organisation's regional members as well as its partnering Austrian and Swiss national public-service broadcasters, whereby every regional station contributes a number of episodes to a common pool.

Therefore, the series is a collection of different police stories where different police teams each solve crimes in their respective city. Uniqueness in architecture, customs and dialects of the cities is therefore a distinctive part of the series and often the city, not the police force, is the real main character of an episode. The concept of local stations only producing a couple of shows per year has also enabled the shows to be longer (90 minutes) and more fleshed out psychologically than other weekly TV dramas.

The first episode was broadcast on 29 November 1970. Episodes are broadcast on ARD's main channel Das Erste on Sunday evening at the prime viewing time of 8:15 pm (just after the 8 pm Tagesschau news) around three times a month. Reruns are often shown by various regional ARD stations and on foreign broadcasters. Alongside the member stations of the ARD, the national Austrian broadcasting corporation Österreichischer Rundfunk joined the production pool in 1971 and airs the program on its ORF 2 channel. Switzerland's Schweizer Fernsehen joined the pool from 1990 to 2001 and again in 2011 and distributes its episodes through its channel SRF 1.

The series Polizeiruf 110, which was produced by East Germany's state TV broadcaster as a counterpart to the West German Tatort and has a similar regional production approach, is still produced by ARD's regional broadcasters Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). Polizeiruf 110 shares the Sunday night prime time slot on Das Erste with Tatort.

Concept

The main feature of Tatort is that it is jointly produced by all participating regional TV stations. Each of the eleven companies involved (the nine German regional TV channels or Landesrundfunkanstalten that together form ARD, plus ORF in Austria and SRF in Switzerland), produces its own episodes. Each station features usually more than one team of inspectors in different cities in its region, depending on the size of the producing broadcaster. Each of the roughly 20 active teams appears one to two times each year. Nearly every Sunday, a new episode from a different city premieres on Das Erste; old episodes are often shown through all participating stations as part of their common programming. The series shares this concept with its former East German counterpart Polizeiruf 110, which basically is produced as four additional Tatort investigator teams aired under a different series name and opening credits by some regional broadcasters, mostly those which evolved from East German state television.

Every Tatort episode features a different team of inspectors in a different city. Combined with the fact that the episodes are, at 90 minutes long, almost movie-length and with rarely more than 30 episodes in one year, this makes for a cultural phenomenon closer to a string of made-for-TV movies than a typical police series.

This pooling concept was mainly due to the nature of the public broadcast television channel ARD, which is jointly operated by all of Germany's regional public Landesrundfunkanstalten. The 9 regional public broadcasters collect broadcasting fees in their region of Germany (each region comprising one or more federal states), and each have multiple radio stations and a regional TV station. Das Erste is produced as a joint national channel with common national programming. Each regional broadcaster is responsible for parts of the programming, unlike for instance in the US with its network affiliate system. Usually one to three broadcasters produce one TV programme in cooperation. When Tatort was developed as a series of weekly feature film-long local crime stories, the stated concept was used to distribute financial and organizational efforts.

Apart from the unique joint-pooling system, the series is also characterised by the episode length of around 90 minutes, which allows for more in-depth and psychological fleshing out of the characters. Although almost all episodes feature the investigation of a homicide, it is never just a simple case of whodunit. Often the episode length allows for the crime to be shown in all its aspects, with equal attention focused on the perpetrators and the victims as on the inspectors. On several occasions the actual police work is just a side note in the story, as the main plot might focus on how one of the persons involved deals with the crime and its aftermath. Episodes also deal with social and political issues.

With the national broadcasting corporations of Austria and Switzerland participating, the episodes of Tatort are currently set in various cities of Germany, Vienna, and Lucerne. Originally each of the participating member stations limited their episodes to one team of investigators in one city: for ease of production this was mostly the city the broadcast station was in, but over the years some stations broadcasting over a large regional area have Tatorts playing in several cities. Notably, the WDR (based in Cologne) has three teams of investigators playing respectively in Cologne, Münster, and Dortmund. Episodes are either produced by the station's own production facilities, or are filmed and often also written by outside production houses on behalf of the station. This sometimes leads to situations where, for instance, a Tatort set in Thuringia is actually produced in Bavaria, with only a handful of scenes shot 'on location' in the town the story is supposed to be set in. As a consequence, minor roles are sometimes played by actors or extras that don't have the matching regional accent.

A similar concept of independently filming and then pooling episodes was used from 1988 to 1992 in the series Eurocops, jointly produced by several national European TV stations.

Tatort has not found wide distribution in non-German speaking countries, but some episodes were distributed as stand-alone mini series. Most notably the 2013 series starring Til Schweiger and Fahri Yardım in Hamburg was distributed by Channel 4 under the title Nick's Law.

History

Gunther Witte, dramatist and TV head at WDR (West German Broadcasting Cologne), developed the series against initial resistance. Witte and his successors have ensured that one or two detectives are at the center of every story, and the cases are shown from their perspective; they are usually members of a team, and their lives are also included.

In January 2008 a similarly produced series of radio dramas called ARD Radio Tatort was introduced, new episodes are aired monthly by regional radio stations, but not at the same time.

In 2012, more than 100,000 people participated in the first and only online game linked to the SWR Tatort production, "Der Wald steht schwarz und schweiget".

In January 2014, Tatort received the 50th Grimme Award.

Features

The show is still aired on Sundays at 8:15 p.m. in Germany and Austria, and 8:05 p.m. in Switzerland. About 30 episodes are made each year. By May 2018, 1055 episodes had been produced, plus 13 made in Austria and shown only there. Episode nr. 1000 was broadcast on Sunday 13 November 2016.

The episodes of some series of Tatort, such as the discontinued series about Schimanski, played by Götz George, have become cultural icons.

The opening sequence of each episode has essentially remained the same throughout the decades except for slight changes. Klaus Doldinger composed the title music with Udo Lindenberg on drums.

In East Germany

At the same time the ARD was starting its Tatort format, the DDR had its own police procedural/crime show called Polizeiruf 110 ("Police dial 1-1-0"). The series premiered in 1971, less than a year after the first Tatort. It too was a police procedural, with various teams of investigators in various cities of the DDR, but in contrast to the West, only a small part of their cases involved actual homicides. The psychology of the perpetrators and the victims was also more prevalent. The series continued through all of the 1970s and 80s and even survived the Wende, continuing until 1991.

In 1990, Polizeiruf practiced its own brand of German unification with episode 142, "Unter Brüdern" ("Amongst Brothers"), a crossover with the Tatort investigators Schimanski and Thanner (this was co-produced with ARD and a medley of the two series themes were used in the opening intro). Until 1991, the series continued more or less independently for 11 more episodes until episode 153 (22 December 1991), again a crossover, in which Kommissar Thanner becomes the team's superior. Also in 1991, as part of the unification, the DDR's television company DFF was split into the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) and Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg (ORB) while the television stations in the new state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern would be operated as part of the NDR.

As MDR, ORB and NDR were all partners in the ARD, it was expected that they would start producing Tatort episodes as well. However, seeing the popularity of Polizeiruf 110, it was decided that the stations would contribute to the Tatort pool, but that its episodes would keep the name of Polizeiruf 110 and their own title music and intro. Still, they would be broadcast over all ARD stations on Sunday evening just like (or instead of) the 'western' Tatort.

Reorganising took one and a half years, but on 13 June 1993, the now MDR restarted the series in Tatort format. This first episode was set in Leipzig, just as in 1991. However, today's episodes produced by the MDR are set in Magdeburg, while those produced by NDR are set in Rostock. The ORB (and later ORB's successor, RBB) has its episodes headed by the same team of investigators, but take place in various cities of Brandenburg. In addition, Bavarian Broadcasting BR produces both Polizeiruf and Tatort episodes, both set in Munich. Like the original, the Bavarian Polizeiruf episodes focus more on the psychology of the crimes and more on crimes other than homicides. Over the years several other 'western' local broadcasters tried their hand at producing Polizeiruf episodes as a sort of 'alternative Tatort' alongside the regular ones. However, all of them stopped after a few episodes.

On 15 May 2015, RBB aired the 350th episode of Polizeiruf 110, the 197th episode of the new format.

In 2013, seeing that Thuringia was so far the only federal state in Germany that had neither a Tatort nor a Polizeiruf set in one of its cities, the MDR ordered two new Tatort series, set in Erfurt and Weimar respectively. Both are produced for the MDR by Bavarian companies.

As 1-1-0 is the speed dial code for police/emergency dispatch in Germany, but not in Austria, Polizeiruf 110 is broadcast in Austria as Polizeiruf 133.

Table of broadcasters

There have been over 1100 episodes of Tatort, from November 1970 up to the beginning of January 2020 these have been the product of a dozen broadcasters, based around various lead investigators. While some (about 30) have featured only once or twice, a number of investigators have featured in multiple episodes. There are 22 current investigative strands, and three have been the subject of over 70 episodes.

Year	Broadcast Station	Lead Investigator	Actors	City	Number of Episodes
1970–1982	NDR	Paul Trimmel	Walter Richter	Hamburg	11
1970–1973	SR	Liersdahl and Schäfermann	Dieter Eppler	Saarbrücken	2
1971–1973	WDR	Kressin	Sieghardt Rupp	Cologne	7
1971–1986	SDR	Eugen Lutz	Werner Schumacher	8 different towns in Baden-Württemberg	16
1971–1979	HR	Konrad	Klaus Höhne	Frankfurt am Main	8
1971–1978	NDR	Finke	Klaus Schwarzkopf	Kiel and other places in Schleswig-Holstein	7
1971–1983	ORF	Viktor Marek	Fritz Eckhardt	Vienna	13
1971–1972	SFB	Erwin Kasulke	Paul Esser	West Berlin	2
1972–1981	BR	Melchior Veigl	Gustl Bayrhammer	Munich	15
1972	SWF	Horst Pflüger	Ernst Jacobi	Baden-Baden	1
1973	RB	Walter Böck	Hans Häckermann	Bremen	1
1973–1977	SWF	Franz Gerber	Heinz Schimmelpfennig	Baden-Baden	5
1974–1980	WDR	Heinz Haferkamp	Hansjörg Felmy	Essen	20
1974–1977	NDR	Heinz Brammer	Knut Hinz	Hanover	4
1975–1977	SFB	Martin Schmidt	Martin Hirthe	West Berlin	3
1977–1984	SR	Schäfermann	Manfred Heidmann	Saarbrücken	4
1978–1980	SWF	Marianne Buchmüller	Nicole Heesters	Mainz	3
1978–1983	HR	Bergmann	Heinz Treuke (1978), Lutz Moik (1981-1983)	Frankfurt am Main	3
1978–1979	SFB	Matthias Behnke	Hans-Peter Korff	West Berlin	2
1979	NDR	Nagel	Diether Krebs	Braunschweig	1
1979–1985	NDR	Delius	Horst Bollmann	Hamburg	3
1980	HR	Sander	Volkert Kraeft	Frankfurt am Main	1
1980	WDR	Paul Enders	Jörg Hube	Essen, Frankfurt am Main	1
1980–1982	NDR	Jochen Piper	Bernd Seebacher	Bremen	2
1980	WDR	Willy Kreutzer	Willy Semmelrogge	Essen	1
1981–1985	SFB	Friedrich Walther	Volker Brandt	West Berlin	6
1981–1988	SWF	Hanne Wiegand	Karin Anselm	Baden-Baden, Karlsruhe, Mainz	8
1981	NDR	Greve	Erik Schumann	small town in Schleswig-Holstein	1
1981	NDR	Beck	Hans Häckermann	Lübeck	1
1981–1991	WDR	Horst Schimanski and Christian Thanner	Götz George and Eberhard Feik	Duisburg	29
1981–1987	BR	Ludwig Lenz	Helmut Fischer	Munich	7
1982	HR	Werner Rolfs	Klaus Löwitsch	Frankfurt am Main	1
1982	NDR	Nikolaus Schnoor	Uwe Dallmeier	Bremerhaven	1
1983	NDR	Ronke	Ulrich von Bock	Hamburg	1
1984	HR	Rullmann	Hans-Werner Bussinger	small towns in Hesse	1
1984–2001	NDR	Paul Stoever and Peter Brockmöller	Manfred Krug and Charles Brauer	Hamburg and Neuwerk	41, Brockmöller: 38
1984–1986	ORF	Hirth	Kurt Jaggberg	Vienna	3 (+ 6 only ORF)
1985	HR	Reinhold Dietze	Klaus Löwitsch	Frankfurt am Main	1
1985–2001	HR	Edgar Brinkmann	Karl-Heinz von Hassel	Frankfurt am Main	28
1985–1989	SFB	Hans Georg Bülow	Heinz Drache	Berlin	6
1986	BR	Siggi Riedmüller	Günther Maria Halmer	Munich	1
1986	ORF	Lutinsky	Miguel Herz-Kestranek	Vienna	1 (only ORF)
1986-1988	ORF	Pfeifer	Bruno Dallansky	Vienna	3 (+5 only ORF)
1987–1988	SDR	Georg Thomas Schreitle	Horst Michael Neutze	Stuttgart, Führstadt	3
1987	BR	Karl Scherrer	Hans Brenner	Munich	1
1988–2005	SR	Max Palu	Jochen Senf	Saarbrücken and other places in Saarland	17
1988–1989	BR	Otto Brandenburg	Horst Bollmann	Munich	2
1989–1996	ORF	Michael Fichtl	Michael Janisch	Vienna	8 (+1 only ORF)
since 1989	SWF, SWR	Lena Odenthal, Mario Kopper, and Johanna Stern	Ulrike Folkerts, Andreas Hoppe, and Lisa Bitter	Ludwigshafen	72, Kopper: 56, Stern: 10
1990	DRS	Walter Howald	Mathias Gnädinger	Bern	1
since 1991	BR	Ivo Batic, Franz Leitmayr (and Detective Sergeant Carlo Menzinger until 2007)	Miroslav Nemec, Udo Wachtveitl and Michael Fitz	Munich	86, Menzinger: 45 (two of them together with Faber)
1991–1992	DRS	Reto Carlucci	Andrea Zogg	Bern	2
1991–1995	SFB	Franz Markowitz	Günter Lamprecht	Berlin	8
1992–2007	MDR	Bruno Ehrlicher and Kain	Peter Sodann and Bernd Michael Lade	first Dresden, later Leipzig, one episode in Cologne as well	45, (two of them together with Ballauf and Schenk)
1992–1997	WDR	Bernd Flemming, Detective Constable Max Ballauf and Detective Constable Miriam Koch	Martin Lüttge, Klaus J. Behrendt and Roswitha Schreiner	Düsseldorf	15, Ballauf: 9
1992–2007	SDR, SWR	Ernst Bienzle and Detective Sergeant Günter Gächter	Dietz Werner Steck and Rüdiger Wandel	Stuttgart	25
1993–2002	DRS	Philipp von Burg and Markus Gertsch	L.I. Kisch and E.C. Sigrist	Bern	9
1995	HR	Leo Felber	Heinz Schubert	Frankfurt am Main	1
1996–1998	SFB	Ernst Roiter and Detective Constable Michael Zorrowski	Winfried Glatzeder and Robinson Reichel	Berlin	12
1996	ORF	Max Becker	Klaus Wildbolz	Vienna	1
1997	ORF	Paul Kant and Jakob Varanasi	Wolfgang Hübsch and Johannes Nikolussi	Vienna	2
1997	NDR	Lea Sommer	Hannelore Elsner	Hamburg	2
since 1997	WDR	Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk	Klaus J. Behrendt and Dietmar Bär	Cologne, two episodes in Leipzig as well	79, (respectively two of them together with Ehrlicher/Kain and Saalfeld/Keppler)
1997–2019	RB	Inga Lürsen and Detective Constable Nils Stedefreund	Sabine Postel and Oliver Mommsen	Bremen, Bremerhaven	39 (with Stedefreund: 34)
1999–2014	SFB, rbb	Till Ritter and Robert Hellmann, later Felix Stark	Dominic Raacke and Stefan Jürgens, later Boris Aljinovic	Berlin	37, (with Hellmann: 6, with Stark: 31, the last episode only with Stark)
since 1999	ORF	Moritz Eisner and Bibi Fellner	Harald Krassnitzer and Adele Neuhauser	Vienna and other places in Austria	49 (with Fellner: 25)
2001–2008	NDR	Jan Casstorff and Detective Sergeant Eduard Holicek	Robert Atzorn, Tilo Prückner	Hamburg	15
2002–2010	HR	Detective Sergeant Charlotte Sänger and Fritz Dellwo	Andrea Sawatzki and Jörg Schüttauf	Frankfurt am Main	18
since 2002	NDR	Charlotte Lindholm	Maria Furtwängler	Hanover and small towns in Lower Saxony	28
2002-2016	SWR	Klara Blum and Kai Perlmann	Eva Mattes and Sebastian Bezzel	Konstanz and other places around Lake Constance	31 (with Perlmann: 27)
since 2002	WDR	Frank Thiel and forensic doctor Prof. Karl-Friedrich Boerne	Axel Prahl and Jan Josef Liefers	Münster (Westfalia) and around	38
since 2003	NDR	Klaus Borowski, Frieda Jung (2003-2010), Sarah Brandt (2010-2017), Mila Sahin (since 2017)	Axel Milberg, Maren Eggert (2003-2010), Sibel Kekilli (2010-2017), Almila Bagriacik (since 2017)	Kiel	35 (with Jung: 14, with Brandt: 14)
2006-2012	SR	Franz Kappl and Stephan Deininger	Maximilian Brückner and Gregor Weber	Saarbrücken	7
since 2008	SWR	Sebastian Bootz and Thorsten Lannert	Felix Klare and Richy Müller	Stuttgart	26
2008-2015	MDR	Eva Saalfeld and Andreas Keppler	Simone Thomalla and Martin Wuttke	Leipzig	21 (two of them together with Ballauf and Schenk)
2008-2012	NDR	Cenk Batu	Mehmet Kurtuluş	Hamburg	6
since 2010	HR	Felix Murot	Ulrich Tukur	Wiesbaden	9
2011–2015	HR	Conny Mey and Frank Steier	Nina Kunzendorf und Joachim Król	Frankfurt	7 (with Mey: 5)
2011–2019	SRF	Reto Flückiger and Liz Ritschard	Stefan Gubser and Delia Mayer	Lucerne	17 (with Ritschard: 16)
since 2012	WDR	Peter Faber, Martina Bönisch, Nora Dalay and Daniel Kossik	Jörg Hartmann, Anna Schudt, Aylin Tezel and Stefan Konarske	Dortmund	18 (two of them together with Batic and Leitmayr)
2013–2019	SR	Jens Stellbrink and Lisa Marx	Devid Striesow and Elisabeth Brück	Saarbrücken	8
since 2013	NDR	Nick Tschiller and Yalcin Gümer	Til Schweiger and Fahri Ogün Yardım	Hamburg	6
since 2013	NDR	Thorsten Falke and Katharina Lorenz	Wotan Wilke Möhring and Petra Schmidt-Schaller (2013-2015), Franziska Weisz (since 2016)	Hamburg and other places in Northern Germany	13 (6 with Lorenz, 7 with Grosz)
2013–2014	MDR	Henry Funck, Maik Schaffert and Aline Grewel	Friedrich Mücke, Benjamin Kramme and Alina Levshin	Erfurt	2
2013–2021	MDR	Lessing and Kira Dorn	Christian Ulmen and Nora Tschirner	Weimar	10
since 2015	rbb	Nina Rubin and Robert Karow	Meret Becker, Mark Waschke	Berlin	12
since 2015	BR	Paula Ringelhahn and Felix Voss	Dagmar Manzel, Fabian Hinrichs	Nuremberg and other places in Franconia	6
since 2015	HR	Anna Janneke and Paul Brix	Margarita Broich, Wolfram Koch	Frankfurt am Main	12
since 2016	MDR	Henni Sieland, Karin Gorniak and Peter Michael Schnabel	Alwara Höfels, Karin Hanczewski, Martin Brambach	Dresden	10
since 2016	SWR	Ellen Berlinger	Heike Makatsch	Freiburg, then Mainz	2
since 2017	SWR	Franziska Tobler and Friedmann Berg	Eva Löbau, Hans-Jochen Wagner	Freiburg and the Black Forest	6
since 2020	SR	Adam Schürk and Leo Hölzer	Daniel Sträßer and Vladimir Burlakov	Saarbrücken	1
since 2020	SRF	Isabelle Grandjean and Tessa Ott	Anna Pieri Zuercher and Carol Schuler	Zürich	1

Last update: 26 December 2020

Soundtracks (selection)

Some Tatort episodes from the 1980s and 1990s included songs that subsequently became quite well known, and two of them reached the top of the charts: "Faust auf Faust (Schimanski)" by Klaus Lage from the Tatort movie Zahn um Zahn, and "Midnight Lady" by Chris Norman, written by Dieter Bohlen, which appears on the episode "Der Tausch". Some random selected soundtracks:

Artist	Title song	Episode	Year	TV station
Can	"Vitamin C"	"Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street"	1973	WDR
Tangerine Dream	"Das Mädchen auf der Treppe"	"Das Mädchen auf der Treppe"	1982	WDR
Tangerine Dream	"Daydream – Moorland"	"Miriam"	1983	WDR
Warning	"Why Can The Bodies Fly"	"Peggy hat Angst"	1983	SWF
Jil Anderson	"Without You (Baby, Baby)"	"Haie vor Helgoland"	1984	NDR
Mark Spiro	"Winds Of Change"	"Das Haus im Wald"	1985	WDR
Patricia Simpson	"Dreams In The City"	"Nachtstreife"	1985	ORF
Die Toten Hosen	"Verschwende deine Zeit"	"Voll auf Haß"	1987	NDR
Sandra	"Stop For A Minute"	"Salü Palu"	1988	SR
Roger Chapman	"Slap Bang in the Middle"	"Einzelhaft"	1988	WDR
Bonnie Tyler	"Against The Wind"	"Der Fall Schimanski"	1991	WDR
Wolf Maahn	"Cool"	"Der Mörder und der Prinz"	1992	WDR
Markus Küpper	"Sie hat Schluß gemacht"	"Ein ehrenwertes Haus"	1994	MDR
Ben Becker	"Alter Mann"	"Falsches Alibi"	1995	MDR
Rammstein	Asche zu Asche	"Die Geschichte vom bösen Friedrich"	2016	HR

See also

• Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1974, Tatort episode 25)
• Reifezeugnis (1977, Tatort episode 73)
• Es lebe der Tod (Long Live Death) (2016, Tatort episode 1001)

Further reading

• Himmelman, Michael (26 August 2009), "German Viewers Love Their Detectives on 'Tatort'", New York Times.

External links

• Tatort-Spoiler
• Tatort at IMDb