Hansi Kraus: The eternal rascal – a German destiny

Jan Christoph Krause is probably the only person in Bavaria and possibly in all of Germany who cannot escape his reputation as a child. The man is known across the country as a rascal, oh well: famous. This has been the case for well over 50 years and will probably remain so.

Jan Christoph Krause celebrates his 70th birthday on Sunday (June 26). His “rascal stories” are still regularly repeated on television – under the name that has been familiar to millions of cinema-goers and TV viewers for generations: Hansi Kraus. The eternal rascal – a German destiny.

The rascal in literature

The Lausbub, as a cheeky boy who is always up to pranks is called, especially in southern Germany and Austria, has long occupied literature. However, Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), for example, understood it to mean a young person who “has no bad genius, but makes himself useless with a shabby will”. Accordingly, the brothers Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859) saw the rascal as an “immature, shabby person”.

The two evildoers “Max and Moritz” by the draftsman and poet Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) were also driven by malice and therefore met a terrible end, whereas the US writer Mark Twain (1835-1910) invented a different type: funny, dreamy, intelligent. His orphan Tom Sawyer became the most famous rascal in the world and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” became a masterpiece of world literature.

Not quite as famous, but at least as popular in his homeland, were the “Lasbubengeschichten” by the Bavarian author Ludwig Thoma (1867-1921), which were published in 1905. In it, Thoma describes – authentically and fictionally – his own childhood around 1886 as a Latin student who is a sly old man: a twelve-year-old mixes up school and adults in a tireless fight against mendacity, hypocrisy and puffed-up authority.

The rascal Jan Christoph Krause

In 1964, Thomas’ most successful book was filmed. The producer Franz Seitz can credit the renowned director Helmut Käutner as well as the crème de la crème of the cinema and folk actors of the time such as Michl Lang, Beppo Brem, Franz Muxeneder, Carl Wery, Harald Juhnke, Ernst Fritz Fürbringer, Rosl Mayr, Heidelinde Weis, Michael Verhoeven and the great Elisabeth Flickenschildt win. Only the main role is missing: the rascal Ludwig Thoma. Thus begins the fate of Jan Christoph Krause.

He was born in 1952 in Gliwice, Poland, which was German until 1945 and was called Gleiwitz, an industrial town in Upper Silesia. In 1958 the family came to Munich with the classic Prussian surname Krause. Bavarian was a foreign language for them. The young Jan Christoph settled in quickly and learned the Munich dialect on the street and at school, which for him was “the language I feel comfortable in,” as he once said. At home they spoke more Polish or Upper Silesian.

When the film company was looking for a leading actor for the “Lasbubengeschichten” in the “Abendzeitung”, the Krauses thought their son was the right one. However, the child is less enthusiastic because it has to write a letter of application – and thus reveals a first important qualification: a real rascal is lazy.

Hansi Kraus takes his first steps on the film set

About 200 children register for the performance date in the “Franziskaner” restaurant. Finally, the young Krause remains. Not least because he has a mischievous facial expression, is intelligent and funny and speaks High German with a very nice Upper Bavarian tinge. If those responsible had known from the start that the main actor in this archaic Bavarian film would come from Poland, who knows…

On the set, they quickly realize what kind of fruit their main character is in real life. On the very first day of shooting, the boy realizes that filming isn’t particularly fun, it’s hard work. He said: “Fuck me, I can go to school right away, then I’ll at least have the afternoon off.” The director then granted him many freedoms, which he “also shamelessly exploited”. Some of his real-life pranks, such as the itching powder on the timpani’s toilet paper, even found their way into the script.

The film is a great success, and the cinema audience is particularly enthusiastic about the typically Bavarian slyness of the rascal. However, Jan Christoph Krause gets a shock: he doesn’t see his name on the film poster, it says as the main actor: Hansi Kraus. Film producer Franz Seitz explained it to him: a person with such a Prussian name could not play the Bavarian national poet Ludwig Thoma. He is now Hansi Kraus, that sounds much better.

From child star to educator

A total of five films based on the rascal stories by Ludwig Thoma were made by 1969. Then Hansi Kraus embodies the student Pepe Nietnagel in the seven-part series “Die Lümmel von der Erste Bank”.

He has worked in around 90 cinema and TV productions. Apart from a few thrillers (“Derrick”, “Der Alte”, “Rosenheim-Cops”, “Hubert und Staller”), there are mainly comedies or homeland films from Bavaria or Austria. And he plays at the Komödienstadel Theater and has been a member of the ensemble at the popular Munich Iberl stage since 2006. An actor through and through?

During his time in the film he discovered that he was good with children. That’s why, after graduating from the technical college for design, he first chose the profession of educator, but then decided on acting. “I’m satisfied with my choice and looking back I wouldn’t do anything differently in my life. Despite all the dry spells. I love my job”, .

Financially, the film career as a rascal was not very worthwhile, because Hansi Kraus says that his parents “ripped him off”. “They withheld my film fees and used them for themselves. I only really got to know all of that when I had started a family myself. I asked my parents where my money was. And they said: You don’t own anything. There they had already bought a terraced house in Taufkirchen,” he told Merkur. He hired a lawyer, “who ripped everything apart and recommended that I sue. But I didn’t do it. Despite everything, it was the parents.” After all, he was able to pay off his condominium from part of his previous fees.

“Jungle camp? Nothing for me!”

What he complains about his job is that the industry has become tougher. You are quickly put in a drawer. “I once played a pastor, and then I was a pastor again for the next three roles. I played a craftsman in the film with Hannelore Elsner (1942-2019) and Uschi Glas (78). After that I had a few requests for get a role as a craftsman,” he told the Tussenhausen Theater Association.

He’s just Hansi, the eternal rascal. He could live with that without having to pretend. Someone like him doesn’t fit into the RTL “jungle camp” either, although they asked him four times, according to Hansi Kraus about “Merkur”. “If it were about sporting requirements, I would be there. But eating shit and biting off animals’ heads just so that the disgust factor increases for the spectators? Nothing for me!”