Marc-Uwe Kling: star author about his bumpy start

Marc-Uwe Kling (43) knows the feeling when every euro counts. The author of “The Kangaroo Chronicles” has not forgotten his modest beginnings – although his books are now bestsellers and have even been filmed. “Above all, I learned about money that it was scarce,” Kling now tells the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. This embossing from childhood apparently still puts him in his bones today: “You definitely carry that around with you. I still have total problems to take a taxi.”

His career as a stage artist started anything but glamorous. In the Berlin variety theater “apparently” Kling dared his first solo appearance – with a financial result that appears to be a smile today. “At that time you had to pay 100 euros rent,” recalls the satirist. The audience was obviously still manageable: “And I took exactly 101 euros with the program, no joke. A one-euro job.”

But even these lean income found Kling as success at the time. His very first real fee moved in the pocket money area: “That was 32 euros,” recalls the author. “That doesn’t sound like much for one evening. But I just thought: how cool, I got 32 euros – for reading a text.”

Even today, although his works appear regularly in the bestseller lists, the native of Stuttgart deliberately lives modestly. His economy is not only evident in financial, but also in personal consumption. “I do not eat meat. I try to banish all fossil fuels from my life, and where it doesn’t work, I compensate for it. We are trying to be CO2-free in the family,” explains the 43-year-old his philosophy.

However, Kling also makes it clear that he recognizes his privileges and does not want to keep a moral sermon. “But that does not mean that I expect it from others. We can afford it – unlike many others. And then it is simply not the solution,” he emphasizes. “The individual responsibility for the climate crisis is a trap. We cannot save the world individually. This must be solved systemically and politically.”