Obituary: Max Schaudzer is dead – size in the show TV for decades

Max Schaftzer was a show legend, a fixture in television entertainment over decades. He led-always gallant-charm-through TV shows, invented new formats, made a million audience with its “bankruptcy, bad luck and breakdowns” in the mid-1980s. For a long time, the moderator had the title “Firefighter of the ARD” – because everything was actually successful. The veteran from the pioneering period of television died at the age of 84 “after a short serious illness” in Cologne, as his agency confirmed after “Bild” had previously reported.

As a moderator, Schachtzer had turned his back on TV years ago. The program has become monotonous, the quality in a descent, said the Austrian with residence in Cologne and Kitzbühel to his 75th birthday of the German press agency.

But the interest in the entertainment remained. Max Schaubzer moved to the theater. He was on many stages – in 2021, for example in Hanover, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Stuttgart and Berlin. Sometimes he appeared as a guest in a talks, sometimes he was in a quiz show or was in the spotlight at a gala.

The face of big Saturday evening shows of the 80s and 90s

Schaubzer had entered the entertainment in the 1970s. He has been present with top quotas and at the best show time since the 1980s. Successful programs such as “everything or nothing”, “alone against everyone”, “the golden one” or “a place in the sun”. He was the face of big Saturday evening shows in the 80s and 90s – always friendly towards his guests, a very courteous gentleman. He knew everyone who had rank and names in the industry, was closely with Hans Rosenthal or Chris Howland.

Nevertheless, he experienced a big disappointment in 2004: the show “Again and again on Sundays”, which Lookers had invented and moderated for nine years, should be presented by a younger one. The successor Sebastian Deyle was unsuccessful. Stefan Mross later made the program one of the most watched by ARD on Sunday.

Looking had a sense of humor, but didn’t find everything funny

Max Schaubzer liked to make others laugh. However, his judgment about the TV business was bleak in advanced age and by far to television. He considered moderators to be interchangeable, the same runs everywhere, too much is copied and imitated. He had annoyed him that his greatest success “bankruptcies, bad luck and breakdowns” was reissued at the ARD at the end of 2014. “It hurts me because I had failed to secure my rights at the time,” he later told the German Press Agency.

With his mid -70s worker on his large project “Telebono”, but in a reduced version, on the Internet. An originally planned own television station “for people in the second half of life” had proven to be unavailable. Youth craze and “rejuvenation trend” went to the “Robin Hood of the Seniors” (“Bild”) against the stroke – he liked to criticize this in public.

His great love died after 53 years of marriage

Schaftzer had studied economics, completed an acting school and then hired the WDR as a spokesman and reporter. A long television career followed. When it came to an end, the theater stage appealed to him. He started with a crime comedy in Munich.

Then he played in several cities in a wedding comedy “My bride, his father and me”. The role of the “drunken, gay nobility” made him fun in his own words. In 2020 his autobiography “Max Schaubzer – sometimes gentleman, sometimes cool sow”.

A sad cut was the death of his great love Gundel. He was married to the interior designer for 53 years. She died in late 2021.

Schachtzer never wanted to calm down, his motto was: “Always keep moving, have a task. Then you don’t have time to grow old.” In retrospect about his TV shows: “I was always interested in people, wanted the guests to get away well in my programs, regardless of whether celebrities or simple people.” In that point he was “a relic of yesterday”.