Thomas, Peter -sound Orchester-
Der Kommissar
To mark the 100th birthday of composer Peter Thomas on December 1, 2025, Allscore is releasing a soundtrack premiere: for the first time, Thomas' work for the crime series DER KOMMISSAR is being honored on an album. The series was launched by public television broadcaster ZDF in 1969 as a counterweight to the US crime series that were successful in Germany at the time. The series DER KOMMISSAR, produced by Helmut Ringelmann, followed on from the ZDF crime series DAS KRIMINALMUSEUM (1963-1970) and in turn served as a model for its successors DERRICK and DER ALTE, which were also set in Munich. It ran for 97 episodes from 1969 to 1976, all in black and white. Thanks to its sophisticated integration of criminal cases into social developments and generational conflicts, the series is still considered a style-defining document of its time. Not least because of this, DER KOMMISSAR also stands for the progressive use of current pop and rock music titles (The Rolling Stones, CAN, T. Rex...). But established film music composers also had their chance. Peter Thomas, for example, contributed music to 22 episodes. This ranged from simply using individual pre-produced music tracks (library music) to composing the entire film music for an episode (score). The best known is certainly Daisy Door's song "Du lebst in deiner Welt (Highlights of My Dream)" from episode 39 (Als die Blumen Trauer trugen, 1971), which stormed the charts after it was broadcast, sold half a million singles, and led to three appearances by the singer on the TV show "ZDF Hitparade".