Original Postwar Signature on a Postwar Photo of Herbert Reinecker. Herbert Reinecker (24.12.1914 in Hagen † 27.01.2007) worked as the editor-in-chief of a book entitled Der Pimpf about the training system of the Hitler Youth. Reinecker served in a propaganda company of the Waffen-SS during World War II. In the early 1940s, Reinecker also wrote a number of plays, among them Das Dorf bei Odessa, and the novel Der Mann mit der Geige. In 1944, he wrote an award-winning screenplay, Junge Adler (Young Eagles).
After the war, he started working for radio and television. At the same time, he wrote screenplays for the series of German feature films of the 1960s that were loosely based on Edgar Wallace’s novels as well as TV adaptations of Francis Durbridge novels and plays.
In the late 1960s, Reinecker and producer Helmut Ringelmann wanted to create a truly German police detective. At first tentatively conceived as a “German Maigret”, Reinecker’s Kommissar Keller soon metamorphosed into a full-fledged character. Erik Ode was chosen to play Keller in the TV series, Der Kommissar, which was finally launched in 1969 and which became a huge success. In 1974, Reinecker and Ringelmann started a new, similar series, Derrick which was in production until 1998 with major international success.
