Biography
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Born
1979 (age 45)
Die drei Fragezeichen ("The Three Investigators", literally "The Three Question Marks") is a series of young-adult detective books, created by American writer Robert Arthur in 1964. In Germany, the series became very popular and was continued by German writers, even when the original American book series ended in 1987. Today the franchise has gained cult status amongst German fans, especially the recorded audio plays ("Hörspiele") that were first published in 1979. Over 150 episodes have been released since then.
The series is the most popular audio play production in the world, with over 40 million copies sold. Live performances with the voice actors are visited by up to 15,000 people at the same time.
The characters are voiced by Oliver Rohrbeck (as "Justus Jonas"), Jens Wawrczeck (as "Peter Shaw"), and Andreas Fröhlich (as "Bob Andrews"). The stories are narrated by Peter Pasetti (originally as "Alfred Hitchcock", from 1979 till 1995), Matthias Fuchs (from 1995 till 2002), and most recently Thomas Fritsch (since 2002).
Robert Arthur first published the book series as "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators", believing that using a famous figure like movie director Hitchcock would attract attention. Random House was the original U.S. publisher and still holds some of the rights to the books. Other rights are held by the heirs to Robert Arthur (who died in 1969) and the German book publisher Kosmos.
The production of the first audio play episode Die drei ??? und der Superpapagei began in 1979 by the record label EUROPA, located in Quickborn, Germany, a town near Hamburg. In 2004 the label announced, that Die drei ??? would take a "creative break", due to a legal dispute considering the rights to the original books by Robert Arthur. The lawsuit began in 2007 and was settled in 2008, with all rights remaining with Kosmos. In 2006 the label EUROPA produced an audio play series named Die Dr3i to continue the series under a different name, using the original English names and other minor changes to avoid legal actions. In Febuary 2008, when the lawsuit was settled, the label EUROPA and book publisher Kosmos announced that there would be new episodes of Die drei ??? and that Die Dr3i would be discontinued.
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