The Austrian actor Florian Teichtmeister (43) has been charged with possessing child pornography. Teichtmeister will plead guilty in court and accept full responsibility, according to his lawyer. Teichtmeister was dismissed from the Vienna Burgtheater.
The Austrian actor Florian Teichtmeister (43) has been charged with possessing child pornography. The spokeswoman for the Vienna district court confirmed on Friday that the trial against the Burgtheater, film and TV actor (“Corsage”, “Die Toten von Salzburg”) would take place on February 8th. Teichtmeister will plead guilty in court and assume full responsibility, his lawyer Michael Rami told the German Press Agency. “He has confessed throughout the investigation and has always cooperated with the authorities,” Rami wrote.
The Burgtheater in Vienna announced the dismissal of Teichtmeister on Friday. The employment of the ensemble member was terminated with immediate effect. The theater management said that the house learned of the results of the investigation and the process “with great horror” from the media. For Teichtmeister, however, the presumption of innocence applies.
According to the indictment, the suspect had 58,000 files with pornographic depictions of minors, some of whom were under the age of 14, said the court spokeswoman for the German Press Agency. The public radio station Ö1 had previously reported on the case. Teichtmeister faces a sentence of up to two years in prison for possessing these images.
His client had not committed any criminal acts against other people himself, so it was “a purely ‘digital’ crime,” wrote Teichtmeister’s lawyer. The actor has been undergoing psychological treatment for two years, “with the help of which he has managed to work through the mental problems that brought him into possession of the files in question.”
