She shaped the German TV landscape: Ingrid Steeger died at the age of 76. The DPA news agency learned this from Steeger’s private environment on Friday evening. The “Bild” newspaper had previously reported. The actress had just told the newspaper that she needed to be treated at a clinic in Hesse.
“I came to the clinic yesterday morning because I had severe abdominal pain. I won’t have an operation, it will be done with tablets. I’ll stay in the clinic until Friday,” she said on Thursday. “I have an intestinal obstruction, I’m not feeling well. I hope for the best.” Mentally she is doing “quite well,” she said.
Steeger was born Ingrid Anita Stengert in Berlin on April 1, 1947 and initially worked as a secretary. In the 1960s she was discovered by a photographer and worked as a model. In the 1970s she became known nationwide as the new shooting star of the soft sex film industry.
Steeger became known to German television audiences with her role in the slapstick show “Klimbim” in the 1970s. She was last seen in the Peter Thorwarth film “Golden Times” in 2006 alongside Wotan Wilke Möhring and “The A-Team” star Dirk Benedict. In 2019 she was on stage at the Bad Hersfeld Festival.
Her private life was also turbulent. After her short marriage to cameraman Lothar Elias Stickelbrucks, Steeger was in a relationship with “Klimbim” director Michael Pfleghar. “He beat what was on the screen out of me. I was his property and only free when he shot himself,” Steeger himself once said. A few years later, Steeger was with director Dieter Wedel. “He was always good to me,” she said of the relationship. Another marriage and many more relationships followed.
Steeger had been struggling with health problems for some time. Among other things, she was dependent on a wheelchair and had lost a lot of weight. In autumn 2022 she announced that she had to go to a nursing home after a fall in her own four walls. From there she was taken to a clinic on Tuesday, where she died.
Source: “Bild” newspaper, news agencies DPA and AFP
