Walter Sedlmayr (6 January 1926 – 14 July 1990) was a well-known German stage, television, and film actor from Bavaria. He built a decades-long career, performing for more than 25 years with the Münchner Kammerspiele and appearing in numerous Heimatfilme during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1971 he was briefly arrested after a stolen artwork, the Blutenburger Madonna, was found in his home; he was later acquitted of all charges, and the resulting media attention is credited with helping advance his career. His breakthrough film role came in 1972 with Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's "Theodor Hierneis oder Wie man ehem. Hofkoch wird," for which he won the Deutscher Filmpreis for Outstanding Individual Achievement: Actor in 1973. He went on to appear in many popular German television productions, including "Münchner Geschichten," "Der Herr Kottnik," "Der Millionenbauer," and "Polizeiinspektion 1."
On 14 July 1990, Sedlmayr was found dead in the bedroom of his Munich apartment. He had been tied up, stabbed in the stomach with a knife, and beaten about the head with a hammer. The killing received wide public attention in Germany.
On 21 May 1993, former business associates and half-brothers Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber were convicted of Sedlmayr's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Both men were released from prison — one in 2007 and the other in 2008.
Sedlmayr's life and death later became the subject of the 2001 biopic "Wambo," directed by Jo Baier, in which he was portrayed by actor Jürgen Tarrach, as well as an episode of the German television series "Die großen Kriminalfälle."
In 2009, the two convicted men took legal action seeking removal of their names from the German- and English-language Wikipedia articles about the case, arguing that continued publication violated their right to privacy. Their names were removed from the German Wikipedia at the time, but the English-language Wikipedia community declined to do so, a position supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, which noted it neither operates nor holds assets in Germany. In December 2009, Germany's Federal Court of Justice ruled that the convicted men had no right to have their names removed from internet archives, finding that such removal would too strongly interfere with freedom of speech; following this ruling, their names were restored to the German Wikipedia article. In June 2018, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the Federal Court of Justice's decision rejecting the men's request to ban publication of their names.
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