Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff has written television history with the show "One will win".This Tuesday he would do his 100.to celebrate birthday.
100 years of Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff: A review
Everything was better before.One like Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff would have treated the shock sigh of the Schönfärber with relish, about this: "The older I get, the better I used to be better..."Oh yes, that was he.And the longer he no longer stays among us, the lighter his star shines, at least with the remaining TV sizes.
For a Günther Jauch or Harald Schmidt, he is a "charming myth", a legendary entertainer, one of the very big in German television entertainment.For many young, the name is hardly familiar anymore.After all, Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff has been dead for almost 23 years: he was "the Kuli of the nation".And it only existed once.On the 27th.April he would have his 100.Birthday.
So everything started
With his ARD quiz show "One will win" (EEC))) with eight candidates from different European countries, Kulenkampf became the undisputed king of Saturday evening entertainment in the 1960s, 1970s and 80s.If his show "only" had 82 percent, he used to say: "If people no longer want to see us, then we just stop."
Kulenkampff moderated 89 episodes of "EWG" from 1964 until the final 1987, and he was almost 2 until 1990.000 times with his "night thoughts" for the ARD broadcast in front of the camera.There were still some smaller formats, with which he could no longer build on the great successes.
His life away from the camera
He comes from a wealthy Bremen family of merchants and artists.A grandfather was a pianist and music professor, another relative, Georg Kulenkampff, made a career as one of the most famous German violin virtuosos.While his older brother Helmut Helmut Doctor and later became a professor of anatomy at the Saarland University Clinic, Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff studied Kulenkampff after graduating from high school (1939))) at the drama school of the German Theater Berlin.
In 1941 he was moved into the military and came to Russia for war, a traumatic experience.In 1947 Kulenkampff was to become director of the Bremen Theater.He excluded the offer because he felt too young for this post at 26 - and went to Frankfurt to the theater at the Zoo (today Fritz Rémond Theater))).With this change he showed his undisguised character: he did not want to stay on a stage in Bremen, whose boss he could have been...
A wife his whole life
In Frankfurt he also met his wife, the Austrian actress and later children's book author Traudl Schwarz, of whom he was so enthusiastic that after 14 days acquaintance on 11.May 1948 married.The marriage (three children))) lasted for a lifetime.
Basically, he wanted to be "only" a good actor, one who plays big leading roles on stage, such as General Harras in "Des Devil General" by Carl Zuckmayer, one of the great theater successes of Kulenkampfs.But the Bremen merchant's son had to bring his family - and by the way, at the Hessischer Rundfunk, initially as an announcer on radio, later - because he could chat so charmingly - with his first television show "Who Against whom?".
His steep television career
His unique career would no longer work today.Kulenkampff would be far too independent and unadjusted for today's conditions..But even then he caused plenty of talk.
He triggered the first big scandal in 1959 when he said when he moderated "Quiz without title": "Good evening, my very worshiped ladies and gentlemen, in the Federal Republic, in the GDR..."The big parties stood head, Kulenkampff's greeting was the same as" recognition of the injustice state in Central Germany ".So the conditions that sound absurd today were normal at the time.
Always trouble with the Union
Political trouble with the Union parties also acted with his sympathy for the SPD, especially for the SPD Chancellor Willy Brandt.He caused a sensation with his harsh criticism of CDU general secretary Heiner Geißler.Later Kulenkampf apologized at Geißler.
His spontaneity, the great strength of the gifted entertainer Kulenkampff, was also his weakness."The Charmeur" and "Mozart des chatterton", wrote the "Spiegel", "looked unabashedly Uschi's legs" (show assistant Uschi Siebert - Die Red.)))."And then his slightly suggestive compliments came for the assistant's outfit.Uschi, dressed like a female praline, smiled."
Small indications intermediate
These small indications were part of the show of the show, so that the "taz" fruded in 1992 and at "Kulenkrampff" a "greasy slippery paired with the joviality of a car seller" perceived ".
That sounded much more conciliatory six years later.Kulenkampff had died at 77 in his Austrian adopted home of pancreatic cancer.Then the "taz" wrote in its obituary that Kulenkampf had understood itself on an entertainment "that is very British for German standards: sarcastic, sometimes biting, and political every now and then - in the very left, primarily social democratic sense at that time...He always came as serious, as signed as it was polite that nobody could patch him on the stuff."
Eigentlich war er ein trauriger Mensch, der Zeit seines Lebens die schlimmen Erlebnisse als Soldat in Russland (wo er sich vier erfrorene Zehen selbst amputiert hatte))) und den Unfalltod seines vierjährigen Sohns Till nicht verwinden konnte.And who would have preferred to have shone as an actor and not as a TV star.
"I think he didn't take television too seriously," says Harald Schmidt.Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff himself saw it like this: "When we started on television, we wanted to open a four-star restaurant-now we have a chain of snack bars."
Auch er hätte einen rundenBirthday gefeiert: Comedian Dirk Bach wäre vor wenigen Tagen 60 geworden.
England's queen recently became 95: Here you can look at the unforgettable moments of the past 95 years of Queen Elizabeth II.throw.
Read more about stars from TV programs on our topic page.
