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Hall Avarden becomes 90 – “Lamp fright is always there”
Dieter “Didi” Hallervorden wrote TV history. Now he is 90 years old. In conversation, he tells of wishes, freedom of expression, stage fright and what a photo of his wife has to do with it.
Dieter Hallervorden hears many questions twice and triple. Where do you get the strength to be on stage at your age? How do you keep fit? “At the moment I’m actually only an interview provider,” he said recently in his Berlin Schlosspark Theater.
That has a special occasion. Hallervorden turns 90 this Friday (September 5) and is of course more than just an interview partner. As an actor, cabaret artist, theater owner and with his former slapstick figure “Didi”, he made a big name in Germany.
TV history with “Nonstop Nonsens”
In the 1970s he wrote television history with the series “Nonstop Nonsen”. “Palim, Palim” and “Kuh Elsa” have for many cult status. Hallervorden, born in Dessau in 1935, is a versatile artist – and also a more controversial one. With some of his statements, he has become criticized in the past. But later.
When you meet him, it looks energetic, he wears sneakers. At Hallervorden, the nervousness is currently increasing from day to day, as he tells in his Schlosspark Theater. Because there he takes over the leading role on Friday at the premiere of Molières “the imaginary sick” – on his birthday. Do you still have stage fright after the many years in the shop?
“Lamp fright is always there”
“The stage fright is always there,” says Hallervorden in an interview with the German Press Agency. “It is also related to the fact that you know more from year to year what can go wrong. What use is the best monologue, rehearsed and wonderfully depicted when the lighter happens to press the wrong switch and you are in the dark?”
Before his appearances, he says, he comments on his wife Christiane to the make -up mirror, which he married in 2022. His third marriage. He has a total of four children from his first two marriages. In any case, his wife’s image reminds him that there are “more important things than a promise”.
He also imagines that his parents and grandparents are in the audience. “I still know how to laugh at how they smile and imagine that they are sitting in the audience down and steps in a good mood and goodwill on the stage.”
Hallervorden founded the cabaret stage “Die Wühlmäuse” in Berlin, in Dessau his Central German Theater opened in the Marienkirche in 2022. The documentary “Hallervorden – Didi against the rest of the world” in the ARD shows how his career started.
Fight against the joke image “Didi”
The documentary tells of his life and its farewell from the GDR, about his success as a fun maker “Didi”, his interest in political cabaret (“Spott-Light”) or his role as a killer in the thriller “Das Gradespiel” (1970).
Hallervorden fought against his Witzel image later for decades. If he was sitting in the pub, he says it in the documentary, people would have banged a schnapps on the table top without a word and said: “In return now a played joke.”
Twelve years ago, he showed the cinema audience with the film “His last race” that things are quite different. For this he won a German film award. He was also praised for his role of the grandfather suffering from Alzheimer’s in the tragic comedy “Honey in the Head” (2014) with Til Schweiger.
Criticism after “Palim, Palim” sketch in anniversary show
For other things, Hallerviden also faces a headwind. At the ARD anniversary show, he used the “N-word” and the “Z-word” in a slightly modified form of the “Palim, Palim” sketch, which are considered discriminatory. Some users on social media accused him of racism. Hallervorden defended his appearance as a satire.
The term “n-word” today describes a racist name for blacks that was previously used in Germany. The “Z-word” stands for a name for Sinti and Roma, which was also used earlier in Germany.
The actor repeatedly emphasizes how important it is to be able to tell his own opinion. He forms it “regardless of the advantages or disadvantages of political or private kind,” explains Hallervorden in a dpa conversation.
“I say my opinion, and it doesn’t have to be right. Others can correct me. If I find enough arguments that I think:” I have not considered “, then I am also ready to rethink.”
Big demo in Berlin: “I’m on the right side”
He also made the headlines with his attitude to the Gaza War. In mid -September he wants to at a large demo in Berlin under the motto “Stop the genocide in Gaza! No weapons in war areas! Peace instead of arms!” Participate, among others with the BSW boss Sahra Wagenknecht.
Of course, Wagenknecht differentiates him, as Hallervorden says. “But that’s interesting when people with different political attitudes all work together for peace. So I think I’m on the right side.”
Now the 90th birthday is coming up. On Saturday (September 6th) a surprise gala is planned for him in the Schlosspark Theater. What else he would like to experience? He thinks. “There are two travel destinations that I have never entered: Japan and China. I absolutely have to get to know this page of the world again.”
dpa
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
