Thomas Gottschalk will be 75: A TV legend will also get older at some point

Thomas Gottschalk, who celebrates his 75th birthday on May 18, has been one of the largest German entertainers for decades. Local, charming, but also liked to moderate himself through the media landscape. But the times have changed – and the once celebrated Gottschalk has felt that clearly. Last week he announced his farewell to the Saturday evening entertainment.

No question, Gottschalk is a legend. On the radio, in numerous television shows and as an actor with iconic stripes such as “The Supernases” or “Pirate broadcasters PowerPlay”, he has had the masses for decades. Many grew up with him. If the children had bathed on Saturday evening, with a little luck they were allowed to stay up longer to get a “top, the bet!” In the big German Saturday evening show “Wetten, dass ..?” listen.

Very benevolent, many should remember one or the other family evening in front of the television with nostalgically transfigured views. Of course there were also times with the father of the show, Frank Elstner (83), with Wolfgang Lippert (73) and Markus Lanz (56) – but they were not all Gottschalk. To date, he remains the flagship of German Saturday evening entertainment in the minds. He is the pointed beseed Thommy, who grins mischievously, has a brisk saying on his lips and which you can’t really take anything. Or?

In 2018, at a time at a time when X was still called Twitter, Gottschalk reported in an interview with the news agency Spot on News: “I think Twitter is great because I can have something out if I feel like it. When I get grandpa, hundreds of thousands of people are happy and when I am dismembering, I insult me. I like that without the boulevard press.” Especially for his behavior towards female show guests, however, he was repeatedly criticized, not only in the tabloid.

Last October, after a “Spiegel” interview, he was not likely to have felt like he was driven by the Media village for the first time. With the quote “I have touched women on TV in business” ,. In his now set “the Supernasen” podcast, which Gottschalk had with his long-standing companion Mike Krüger (73), he said a little later: “I show every reproach by myself that I would have used my position to touch women on my sofa. That was never my intention, and that was never anything that I could have looked at in view of 20 million.”

A lot was written and discussed, and questionable moments of the moderator were also discussed long before. While the awareness of society seems to change slowly, the debate about the behavior of Gottschalk also became louder. More than six years earlier, he chose similar words in conversation with Spot on News: “It was all on business, and if I dragged on the clothes of my female guests, it was only to prevent them from having fled back to Hollywood with their private jet. And I witness several million for that.”

It was also an issue about a decade before. Gottschalk saw himself as a victim of “professional critics” in 2008, as he told the program magazine “TV Digital”. He may be constructive criticism, but does not see it to “have to justify himself in this business after 20 years”. He was sometimes annoyed by the “snot nobility of young online journalists who want to iron everything away that is over 40”. And Gottschalk explained: “I also do not use the time to sexually approach female guests and then rape them at the unobserved moment – what many critics fear. I am one who always touches people he likes.”

Gottschalk has apparently felt misunderstood in recent years. “Bet that..?” Not wanting to moderate anymore, with two main reasons. On the one hand, the moderator does not want to be explained to him at some point what celebrities are sitting on his TV couch. On the other hand, he “always said on TV what I said at home. In the meantime, I am talking differently at home like on TV – and that is not a great development. And before any desperate recording manager runs back and forth here and says: ‘You have again Herrabert.’ Then I say: ‘Then I would rather not say anything anymore.’ “

“UNLILTERTERT: Confessions of someone who cannot hold the mouth,” is his book published in 2024. He was “symbolically on the way with an old car on new ways” ,. “The traffic signs are more legible today than in my time, and it is checked much more precisely whether guys like me adhere to the road traffic regulations. This is a good thing, but it has also become complicated.”

The entertainer spoke, among other things, for publication. “It is an escape to the front when I said that I have made myself like a entertainer all my life, but never like a man who said his opinion,” said Gottschalk. A entertainer is a person who “tells the audience what it wants to hear. A person of my age should eventually come out with reality,” he continued. He used to have the feeling that he was “understood. I’m just. Today it’s no longer about who you are but but [um] What you say and who feels attacked in any form or feels on your feet. “

In the same interview he noticed: “I always said what I thought, but now I have the impression that it is no longer enough to say, I’m just. But you just can’t say certain things anymore.” He does not want to get anywhere or harm anyone. Many older, but also younger people would therefore agree with Gottschalk. However, there are also people who disagree: “But I mean, I mean people who do not have reality in the eye and who are in some form to a majority” whom he does not want to run after.

The reality is: While Gottschalk wants to differentiate itself from the majority, it has also followed him for decades. She celebrated him and his many appearances. And he was entertaining to many people, otherwise he would not have lured millions in front of the screens. But the reality is also: of course he can say what he wants – but today he has to expect significantly more headwind than before. This is quite justified, but makes things a little more complicated for him despite the clear “traffic signs”.

Shortly before his 75th birthday, Gottschalk has now drawn a line. In the RTL show “Because you don’t know what’s going on”, he officially did his TV party last week. “There is always a moment when you can say: that was it for me on Saturday evening,” the moderator began and then added: “And this moment came for me today.”

According to Gottschalk, he will be 75 years old next week, “and that is the point for a moderator where you should say: you take yourself out of yourself.” In allusion to the new Pontifex Leo XIV, who is 69 years old, the TV legend continued: He always said, “If the Pope is younger than me, then it has gone. He had “looked after and under control for 35 years,” he ended his speech under the applause of the audience. However, he has not yet completely disappeared from the screens: at the beginning of December, Thomas Gottschalk is said to appear in a farewell show.