He died at the age of 83, the city of Munich confirmed on Thursday. As the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported, he died earlier this week. Achternbusch is best known for his bizarre films such as “Andechser Feeling”, “Servus Bayern” or “The Ghost”. He has also created plays, published books and hundreds of paintings. Above all, Achternbusch was characterized by a love-hate relationship with his homeland of Bavaria.
As early as the 1970s, Achternbusch came into contact with the scene of German auteur filmmakers around Werner Herzog, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. His films, often shot with little effort, regularly made fun of the nonconformist, subversive, bigoted and obedient Bavarian soul of the people. In “Der Depp” (1983) he had his favorite enemy Franz Josef Strauss poisoned, in the semi-documentary “Bierkampf” he settled accounts with a Bavarian sanctuary: the Oktoberfest.
Achternbusch was born in Munich as the illegitimate son of a sports teacher and a dental technician and grew up in the Bavarian Forest. After graduating from high school in Cham, he studied at the art academies in Munich and Nuremberg and got by with odd jobs before he started writing.
With his first novel “Alexanderschlacht” he secured a permanent place in the literary avant-garde of the 1970s and 1980s. With the plays he wrote in quick succession, he twice won the Mülheim Dramatist Prize. His two-person play “Gust” (1986) with Sepp Bierbichler as a farmer who has fallen out of time and is about to lose his wife ran successfully for years at the Munich Kammerspiele. In 2017, “Dogtown Munich” premiered at the Munich Volkstheater, another commitment to his hometown.
Source: Nachrichten
