This was announced by the Munich I district court. / Director Dieter Wedel died
The court wanted to announce today whether there will be a trial against Wedel. He was accused of rape, among other things.
The director Dieter Wedel is dead. He died on July 13 in Hamburg, according to the Munich I district court, where criminal proceedings against Wedel were pending. The court wanted to announce today whether there will be a trial against Wedel, but instead announced Wedel’s death. According to the court, the case against him is now being discontinued. The public prosecutor had accused Wedel in March of last year of an allegation from 1996.
Allegation of rape / Director Dieter Wedel died
The actress Jany Tempel stated that Wedel raped her in a Munich luxury hotel at the time, Wedel denied this. When the charges were brought, his lawyers spoke of prejudice and emphasized the likelihood that the charges could not be admitted at all – although that hardly ever occurs in the German judiciary.
The lawyer for the joint plaintiff Tempel, on the other hand, only recently complained about the delay in the proceedings against the director. “More than 14 months have passed since the indictment,” lawyer Alexander Stevens wrote in mid-May in a complaint of delay to the court. Temple suffers “a lot from the long process.” She even went on a brief hunger strike to protest that the court had taken so long to reach a decision. Even before the public prosecutor’s office even filed charges, they had been investigating for three years.
Best known case of the German #MeToo debate
The allegations against Wedel became known at the beginning of 2018. At that time, three actresses accused Wedel in “Zeit-Magazin” of having sexually harassed them in the 1990s. Wedel had contradicted the allegations in an affidavit. The case became the most well-known in the German #MeToo debate that started in 2017. Under the hashtag #MeToo, millions of women in particular posted their experiences of sexual assault on social networks.
There were contradictory statements about Wedel’s date of birth during his lifetime. According to current information from the Munich court, he was born on November 12, 1939. He was 82 years old at the time of his death.
Wedel really got off to a flying start in the 1990s. With films such as “The Great Bellheim” and TV miniseries such as “The King of St. Pauli”, he is one of the best-known German directors. He has six children from six women, including a son with Hannelore Elsner, who died in 2019. After the allegations became known, he resigned as director of the Bad Hersfeld Festival.
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