On the death of Helmut Dietl – Farewell to the virtuosos of the background sense – Süddeutsche.de

The material for his films he found in the Bussi-Bussi-Gesellschaft his native Munich. But Helmut Dietl was also interested in the aspirations of the Germans and the celebrity milieu of the Berlin Republic.

By Bernd Graff

In one of his last major interview since Helmut Dietl met his almost certain fate with twinkling melancholy. Lung cancer had been established in October 2013 in him a month later he gave the interview: “Cancer – having just what I needed,” he said

But as casually as appeal here was this. diagnosis at all. This is because the doctors had only a rather less given to him as ten percent chance of a cure, he himself took the classic cancer chemotherapy and radiation treatments very promising. But was surprised him the diagnosis is not. Although he had long since ceased smoking, but he had probably smoked “over a million Gitanes” in his life. “It’s almost a miracle that it’s been so long gone well.” Dietl there was not even seventy years old,

Gitanes, those were the cigarettes in corn paper, the casually stuck so incomprehensible to the lip -. Back in the late sixties, as a French Savoir Vivre Paris May, the student unrest, hip so incredible in Germany.

Helmut Dietl, born on June 22, 1944 in Bad Wiessee / Upper Bavaria, who grew up in Munich, was here on Schwabinger Grammar School High School made and then theater studies and art history studies, rather as though to himself, he made no statements

Munich experienced at that time demos, rebellion, insurrection and upheavals of all kinds. The “New German Cinema” was invented there and rolled all cinematic traditions around. Rainer Werner Fassbinder made “action-theater” for a whole new audience. The musical “Hair / Hair” at Theater an der Briennerstraße provocative completely naked performers.

At the same time, the Republic discussed the movies of sex Spotter Oswalt Kolle, also in Munich residential communities and municipalities, the revolution was proclaimed – thanks to the birth control pill freely available so that the sexual revolution meant Werner Enke and Uschi Glas in the Munich Film “Substance baby” of bourgeois society the mirror before

He had something. the student movement was missing

And in this complex situation of change and trying meets the Gitanes smoking Helmut Dietl, a young man with something that actually completely lacks the bright, but also bullheaded agitators of the student movement in Munich: Dietl has really However humor.

His comic talent he could live out later. For Helmut Dietl began as a manager in television and later became assistant director of the Munich Chamber of games. His first production for the board games was “Let Me ma’s”. He then moved on to a free production company, where he “The wrong weight” and “The Conquest of the Citadel” served as dramaturg and producer, among other things Bernhard Wicki.

“German answer to Woody Allen”

It was only with the legendary “Munich stories” to people from his neighborhood, so to speak, debuted Dietl from 1973 in the TV evening program as a director. Finally introduced him the TV series “I Do not Know”, the “It Can Only Get Worse” In 1979 even came out under the title as a movie.

The critics celebrated Dietl and his excellent with the German Film Award plant as the ” German answer to Woody Allen. “

Comments on the death of Helmut Dietl “Karl Valentin modern times”

Helmut Dietl has in the Bavarian soul looked like no one else. Companion as Senta Berger, Bully Herbig, Michaela May and Konstantin Wecker remember.

Because Dietl finally wanted to have something different than Munich around him, – “always the same faces, the same sayings” – he went one time to Los Angeles, but soon returned to Germany, from 1983 to the ten-part ARD evening series “Monaco Franze– the eternal Stenz” turn to

That was his final breakthrough.. This highly successful production was also in the main program of the second Austrian television and in the third program of the Bavarian television and was in the repetition in the prime time of ARD in 1987 to the summer hit of the year.

After that, the smash hit “Kir Royal followed “a TV-six parter that Dietl turned for the WDR. Unforgotten this great-Munich stories about the gossip columnists “Baby Schimmerlos” by Franz Xaver Kroetz are inimitable embodies.

Actually Dietl portrayed itself but the fact itself. For Kroetz was like his Munich director a probe in the meat of the Munich philistines and wannabes, someone who looked closely and immediately realized who he was dealing with. Dietl and Schimmerlos were anything but Schimmerlos.

“Kir Royal” of course got the Grimme Prize, something would public broadcaster did not produce even today. The WDR wanted to work with Dietl – “a fluke” – continue even necessarily, but he saw – as the Süddeutsche Zeitung confessed 1991 – in the “Television no longer his home” and declared that the future thematic not wanting to be limited to biographies from the Bavarian region.

And now the Dietl spacecraft close observation

bittersweet charm

took off even more.

Two years he wrote the screenplay for his first 1992 movie realized. “Schtonk” he said – and again it came to journalism, this time by the satire about the forged Hitler diaries, which transposed Dietl with Uwe Ochsenknecht, Götz George and Christiane Hoerbiger in the lead roles

Dietl wanted to. realize “Schtonk” no documentary approach to the star affair, but his satire make a “film about Germany” and the “aspirations of the Germans.” And consisted of “the impossible to make the incredible true.”

He was a “virtuoso of the background sense, the bittersweet charm and a sometimes biting sarcasm,” wrote the Focus at that time. He was even more so after his second feature film “Rossini or the murderous question, who with whom fell” out in 1997.

These further with a German Film Award for Best Film of the Year and won three prizes excellent social satire circled back to the Bussi-Bussi Society and Filmschickeria his hometown.

Four marriages and a long liaison

the end of 1995 had Dietl signed a five-year contract with the private Sat.1, through which he lent his writing, directing and Executive Producer to the discovery and promotion of young talent as well as “entertaining quality programs.” For the private channel he also produced Jo Baier’s acclaimed psychological profile “Wambo” for the murdered Bavarian People’s actor Walter Sedlmayr.

With the theatrical comedy “the Looking for and the Finding of Love” returned Dietl 2005, together with the screenwriter Patrick Süskind a very personal adaptation of “Orpheus and Eurydice” -Stoffes as tragicomedy. Moritz Bleibtreu plays the suicidal protagonist Mimi, who acts as Dietl’s alter ego. The critics were here but for rather moderate, the filmdienst spoke of a “. Pseudo-classical, a little sedate dance on a long extinct volcano”

Dietl was married several times: first with the journalist Katharina Wichmann, then to actress Barbara Valentin, then with the Frenchwoman Denise Cheyresy. He then spent a decade with the actress Veronica Ferres – “My Vroni” – dating, which also appeared in several of his films. A fourth marriage ended Dietl 2002 with the director and film producer Tamara Duve, a daughter of SPD politician frankness Duve, the daughter Serafina Marie brought in July 2003 to the world.

Taken from the rejection

Although Dietl’s work revolved around Munich, he lived some years in Berlin-Mitte. It was here that in 2012 the theater play “Zettl,” a parody of the policy operating capital, with Bully Herbig, Ulrich Tukur, Harald Schmidt, Senta Berger, Dieter Hildebrandt, Karoline Herfurth, Dagmar Manzel, Sunnyi Melles, Gert Voss, Christopher Sweet, Götz George and Hanns Hisser Although high-level occupied, but panned almost unanimous critical acclaim.

The story of the ambitious driver in celebrity milieu of the “Berlin Republic”, which rises to the chief editor of a new tabloid magazine caught, not really, and was largely ignored by the public.

Helmut Dietl reported at the time how much the rejection met him. And indicated as well that there could be a link between that injury and his illness.

On March 30, 2015 Helmut Dietl has succumbed to his serious illness.

Comments on the death of Helmut Dietl “Karl Valentin modern times”

Helmut Dietl has looked like no other in the Bavarian soul. Companion as Senta Berger, Bully Herbig, Michaela May and Konstantin Wecker remember.