Katharina Thalbach - Miss Merkel: Murder Under the Christmas Tree

READING

Katharina Thalbach, *


* (*Miss Merkel: Murder Under the Christmas Tree*),


by David Safier

“There’s a dead Santa Claus in our fireplace” is one of those phrases you’d rather not hear during the holiday season. Unless, of course, you’re Angela Merkel and you’re delighted by unexplained deaths in your hometown in the Uckermark region. After a disastrous vacation with the Obamas, the Merkels return home on Christmas Eve to find the aforementioned dead Santa Claus in their half-timbered cottage. The man turns out to be a professional Santa Claus available for hire. Four rival Santas—both men and women—are suspects; they, too, delight the residents of this tranquil town with gifts. And one of them even believes he is the real Santa Claus.

’s Biography Katharina Thalbach made her theatrical breakthrough at the age of 15 in the role of Polly in *The Threepenny Opera* at the Berliner Ensemble. Countless theater roles followed, and since the late 1980s she has also worked as a stage director—for example, at the Schillertheater, the Thalia Theater, and the Maxim Gorki Theater. She also appears regularly in feature films and television movies and has received numerous awards: in 1987, she won the German Film Award for Best Actress; in 1991, she received the Konrad Wolf Prize from the Berlin Academy of Arts; in 1997, she was honored with the Adolf Grimme Prize for the television movie “Gefährliche Freundin.” At the Komödie am Kurfürstendamm, she played Hercule Poirot alongside her daughter and granddaughter in “Murder on the Orient Express,” a production she also directed. In the film adaptations of David Safier’s best-selling “Miss Merkel” series, she took on the title role.