Werner Enke, Star of 'Zur Sache Schätzchen', Dies at 85

Werner Enke, the actor who embodied the cool, charming, and undogmatic spirit of 1960s and 1970s German cinema, died on Monday at age 85 in Munich after a long illness. Together with his life partner, filmmaker May Spils, Enke created a laid-back counterweight to the overheated political scene of the era. Their black-and-white debut film 'Zur Sache Schätzchen' (1968), directed by the then-26-year-old Spils, became a cult classic and a symbol of an anti-establishment movement populated by idlers, word-twisters, and fumblers. The film arrived six years after the exclusively male-signed Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962, which had called for independence and progressiveness in filmmaking. Enke and Spils carved out a unique, nonchalant path alongside the 'Young German Cinema' movement.