Peter Zwegat is dead. The former bankrupt pope of RTL was 74 years old – and lived the last years of his life in seclusion, far from the public.
The last time he was on screen, fans were worried about Peter Zwegat. At this point, the debt advisor had been living the life of a TV pensioner for four years and was enjoying retirement. In 2017 he agreed to appear in front of the cameras again for a special edition of his cult format “Get Out of Debt”. At that time Zwegat was 67 years old.
But the broadcast was repeatedly postponed – and finally only broadcast on RTL two years later, in 2019. The audience saw a Zwegat that had changed visually. “A little thinner hair,” as he said himself, a few kilos lighter and also, probably the most worrying part of the change at the time, with a scratchy, almost brittle voice.
When t-online asked him about it in an interview in 2021, he reacted with surprise: “I still don’t understand why my scratched voice received more attention than the anniversary,” said the 71-year-old at the time. The reason was a sore throat. Many viewers suspected it might have had something to do with the fact that Zwegat had started smoking again. “No, not a single cigarette to date,” contradicted the TV star.
It is one of the last interviews that Zwegat conducted. In the past three years he had disappeared. He is said to have traveled a lot with his wife of many years, Liane. Otherwise he passed the time with “walks, mowing the lawn and chopping wood for our fireplace,” as his partner reported to “Bild” in 2019. The couple last appeared in public together in 2018. It is the last official photo of Peter Zwegat:
Even around his last book publication in 2021, he hardly appeared in public. He published his biography “It all began on Ash Wednesday” together with his wife. She took on most of the work back then, rummaging through Zwegat’s documents and photos in order to put his life together into a narrative.
Both had already written the non-fiction book “Get Out of the Debt Trap” together. In “It all began on Ash Wednesday” things got more personal. The book also describes Zwegat’s life during the corona pandemic and addresses his deep connection to animals. The man who became famous by saving lives on television was also a dedicated animal rescuer until the end. He had “three cats that he loves dearly,” his wife said in 2019 and said: “Almost every vacation trip is also associated with an animal rescue and/or food supply for animals in all countries of the world for us.”
Now Peter Zwegat is dead. He lived in his hometown of Berlin until the end. He leaves behind his wife and two children.
