Joe Bausch: Verrücktes Blut

Most people know the actor Joe Bausch with the striking face from the Cologne crime scene. There he plays the forensic doctor Dr. Joseph Roth.

Hopefully very few people know him from prison. He was a prison doctor in Germany's largest high-security prison in Werl for over 32 years. Joe Bausch is not only successful as an actor and doctor, but also as an author.

His books “Knast”, “Gangsterblues” and “Maxima Culpa” are Spiegel bestsellers. In his latest book, which will be published in May 2024, Joe Bausch speaks for the first time about the time in which he had to experience the deepest humiliation, violence and attacks.

A farm in the barren Westerwald, in the early 1950s. The horrors and privations of war are still in people's bones. In any case, there has always been a harsh climate in this area. The parents have no time for friendly attention and no sense for tender care.

Josef Hermann, who will later call himself Joe, is a bright child. A child who cannot sit still, learns to read before starting school with the newspapers that are left in the outhouse, and has to help in the family business from an early age. He is only allowed to go to high school because he continues to work until he drops. Beatings are the order of the day - and the 13-year-old foster son, whom his parents have taken in, abuses the child's trust.

Joe Bausch speaks for the first time about growing up as a farmer's son in the post-war period and about how the sometimes traumatic experiences of his childhood and youth shaped him.

(Program in German)