He died on Friday of pancreatic cancer, surrounded by his family at his Los Angeles home, his assistant said on Tuesday.
Petersen was as highly regarded in his adopted California as in his home country, having work with stars like Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Rene Russo and Glenn Close over the course of his decades-long career.
Shortly before his 80th birthday last year, Petersen told dpa that he wanted to "sail over this round anniversary quite casually," joking that he was ignoring retirement and would probably be working at the age of 100 if he could.
He said he was not the type to live in the past: "For me, the view is forward. I rarely look at films I've made. But Das Boot was clearly the big turning point in my life and in my career."
The cinematic epic about the crew of a German submarine during World War II was nominated by for six Oscars and paved Petersen's way to Hollywood.
Petersen, then in his early 40s, was nominated for directing and adapted screenplay, plus cinematography, editing, sound and sound editing. In the end, Gandhi, directed by Britain's Richard Attenborough, was the big Oscar winner. Das Boot came away empty-handed, but it was the starting signal for a major Hollywood career.
Petersen settled in Los Angeles with his wife Maria in 1987.
Petersen landed another box-office hit with the fantasy tale The Neverending Story, followed by the science fiction film Enemy Mine.
The political thriller In the Line Of Fire with Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent was a big box office hit in 1993. The hits then came in rapid succession over the next decade: Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman, Air Force One with Harrison Ford, The Perfect Storm with George Clooney, Troy with Brad Pitt.
It wasn't until 2006's Poseidon, about an ocean disaster to befall a luxury cruise ship, that his success story cooled. The thriller, which cost around $160 million to make, flopped worldwide.
Wolfgang Petersen was born in Emden, Germany on March 14, 1941 and grew up in Hamburg. Later, he honed his craft at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin.
In 1971, he had immediate success with his work on the popular German crime series Tatort. Petersen then became known as a taboo breaker with the 1977 feature film Die Konsequenz, which deals with homosexual love.
In 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Petersen planned a directorial project in Germany - a love story about a KGB agent and a young East German woman, based on a true incident shortly before the Berlin Wall was built. The project never came to pass.
25°C