Elke Sommer, the Berlin-born actress who moved from postwar German film to Hollywood in the 1960s, has died at the age of 85, according to T-Online. She passed away at her home in the United States on Wednesday, 28 October, at around 10 p.m., just over a week before what would have been her 86th birthday on 5 November.
T-Online attributes the details to the German newspaper Bild, which cited photographer Erwin Schneider. Schneider, drawing on information from Sommer's stepson Sebastian Walther, said the actress had died peacefully and was now free to be reunited with her late husband. According to the same reporting, Sommer had been bedridden for an extended period and died of heart failure.
Why it matters
Sommer was part of a small group of European performers who crossed into the American studio system during the 1960s and stayed. She worked steadily across film, television, music and painting, and her career carried her from Berlin to Beverly Hills and, in later years, back and forth between Bavaria and California. Her death closes a chapter of that transatlantic generation, and it comes only months after the loss of her husband, Wolf Walther, whose illness and death shaped her final years in the public eye.
A career that began in the late 1950s
Sommer was born in Berlin and began working as an actress at the end of the 1950s, later adding singing and painting to her professional life. By the 1960s she had made the move to Hollywood and settled in Beverly Hills.
Her breakout year was 1964. That year she received a Golden Globe as best newcomer for her part in the American feature "Der Preis," and she appeared in the comedy "Ein Schuss im Dunkeln," the film for which she remained best known. She was married to journalist Joe Hyams from 1964 until 1981.
Her screen work continued for decades, though her final acting appearance came in 2010 in the film "Das Leben ist zu lang."
A husband's death and a loss of appetite for life
Sommer's last years were dominated by her husband's health. Wolf Walther died in the summer at 77 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Sommer said afterward that her heart was broken and that she felt empty.
The couple had long divided their time between a house in Marloffstein in Bavaria and Los Angeles. In the end they stayed only in the United States, because Walther's doctors were there and travel had become too difficult. The two were married from 1993 and had been together for 40 years.
Sommer had spoken openly the previous November about no longer feeling any joy in living. In an interview with the magazine Bunte, she said the strain of her own health and her husband's had taken a toll, and she made clear she did not fear dying. She described wanting death to come once her husband no longer needed her.
Watch for further tributes and confirmed funeral arrangements from Sommer's family and from the German film industry in the coming days.
