Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Obituary of Hellmuth Karasek: The melancholy comedian – Tagesspiegel

18:23 clock Peter von Becker <- classid: hcf center -> <- text position: hcf text-left -> <- inisprint: false -> <- inhaspic: true ->

No one could look seemingly sad. Until a keyword fell, an idea came. Then Hellmuth Karasek transformed. Klug, quote certain point rich – a critic like no other. Just a dream remained forever unfulfilled.

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He was just about make an enigmatic dark turn in a Hölderlin poem an illuminating remark and the next moment chatting about a Sottise of Woody Allen, had just played a game of tennis, then drink one or two glass of champagne, afternoon yet reviewed a new novel by Philip Roth and the evening was to see in a TV quiz show, in which the name Hölderlin would probably only have been him alone known as teammates (“Professor” and).

In fact, Hellmuth Karasek was entirely in German journalism and cultural life unique. Especially since he translated the so-called extended concept of culture over the decades coining him Zeitung Feuilleton as carefree into real life. His older colleague and later friend Marcel Reich-Ranicki was like he owed the television his cross Popularity

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Both lit there by their mixture of astonishing, the media otherwise not so familiar education – and, thanks to its extremely quick-witted jokes. But while Reich-Ranicki, the Holocaust survivors, especially as a contrasting figure appeared, as Poltergeist, Karasek seemed to satisfy a gentler consensus needs. He suggested, far beyond the focus of the co-determined by him “Literary Quartet” on ZDF, the bridge between high culture and entertainment needs. Between profundity and sometimes higher nonsense. “Freud’s couch & amp; Hempel’s Sofa “was one of his books, a typical title.

Hellmuth Karasek talkte with Gottschalk, Bimbo and vicious beyond the boundaries of the public away and was also a mature Popjournalist. Some critics colleagues have accused him of this diversity: as if he had sacrificed his intellect on the altar of mass culture

The contempt of the mass media was alien to him

But as he did, in spite of occasional irony. but always generous talked about other people from the profession, without envy or malice, the contempt for the mass media it was completely alien. In it, he was very democratic. Not a populist in the sense of conscious or even hypocritical pandering, but only informally popular. In editorial meetings he could well be times sharply in the argument, but wanted to be loved basically. He sought harmony and, if not peace, then in the choice of weapons is not the sword, but the foil

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Karasek, who stressed himself on the second syllable, was born in 1934 in the Moravian town of Brno; he went as a child Hitler-enthusiastic parents during war and occupation nor a Nazi elite junior school, the family fled to Saxony-Anhalt, where in Bernburg an der Saale school he made in the GDR, after the change in the West. This was followed by the Germanic doctorate in Tübingen and first literary and theater reviews in the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” and “Theater heute” in.

As Karasek mid-60s for a short time was chief dramaturge of the Württemberg State Theatre, he has the productions and television recordings of the time so psychologically sharp as poetically fine productions Rudolf Noeltes accompanied, even with appearances in early educational television.

Karasek was, as a guest of the writers group 47, one of the young Federal Republic before and after 1968 formative critics. Not the same as influential, but soon at the height of Joachim Kaiser, Reich-Ranicki or Fritz J. Raddatz. And so called him the “time” to Hamburg as a theater and literary critic. From 1974 to 1991 Karasek was then head of the mirror-cultural ministries, which he led until to greater attention within the political magazine – even with the introduction of authors’ names, because before that were contributions, except by the publisher Rudolf Augstein, usually published anonymously. Not a few journal Revolution, and Karasek belongs now to the lights of the (West) German cultural critic operation.



biographer of Billy Wilder

No longer his heart beat as only for the theater or the literature, as its fresher love he discovered the film for himself and his readers. Above all, the film comedy. Karasek unheroischer because especially the bourgeois hero’s life an affectionate hero was there who had emigrated from the Nazi Reich director Billy Wilder.

In his own father was probably the shadow of the Nazi period, then Karasek new and different fathers, brothers sought , friends. Only Wilder, which he dedicated as a wonderful biography “Close”, later Reich-Ranicki. When the “Mirror” in the 80s, even made a cover story about sex in the Catholic Church and long no matching heading was made Karasek fell shortly before the editorial deadline the line “monks like it hot” one. He has the pun also faxed to Billy Wilder to Hollywood, and whose amusement was Karasek pride

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Eitel he was certainly too, but discreetly. He was one of the first people (more precisely, men) who wore sometime pink shirts, but Karasek was in no dude, but only the often somewhat disheveled colorful bird. He had something of a melancholy comedian. Often heavy eyelids, hanging cheeks and mouth, no one could look seemingly sad. Until a keyword fell, an idea came, and then he turned with a slightly rolling voice in a fireworks display. Klug, quote certain point rich. So we saw him at the Tagesspiegel in the years 1997 to 2004, as the editor.

Once I asked him for an interview in his Hamburg apartment after the “many weddings”, on which he has so much dancing. He answered frankly that he was afraid. Fear cancel. “Because then I think at some point the phone remains silent, and nobody calls anymore.” In him was a restlessness that made him get up early even after short, partying nights, diligently write articles and books was called, long before the many other media appearances. Karasek told me then that he had never open during limited lifetimes his mail, for fear of the warnings of his bank. A Lieblingsbonmot was for him Nestroy sentence: “The Phoenicians invented money. But why so little? “



Escape and home losses have marked him

greed he was still a stranger. As strange as swank addiction. He drank so much champagne every day, because he just liked it and he was not savers. “I’m a spendthrift,” he liked to say, and that was no joke. He had a good memory for to hunger, thirst and fear.

To this end, that’s the key to the whole Karasek, you have to read his 2004 published autobiography “The Fugitive”. Karasek describes in childhood, the war, the multiple home loss and the experience with dictatorships and ideologies, only under the Nazis then in the former GDR. Not only, therefore, also his former little book on Bertolt Brecht’s (“The recent case of a theater classic”) in the fullness of almost conspicuous Brecht literature one of the best. He recognizes, as the talent of the century playwright by Marxism equally inspired as damaged.

Kluge, usually written without much theoretical ballast Books from Karasek, there are over Carl Sternheim and Max Frisch, on Billy Wilder anyway, about jokes, women and men, also novels such as “The Magazine” (his look in the “mirror”), a journalistic culture history of cell phones or, a long time before major work of the historian Heinrich August Winkler, “Go West!”: an entertaining study of West German West binding by the first experience of popular culture

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His knowledge, its charm and Fairness were in the “Literary Quartet”, the balancing element between Marcel Reich-Ranicki (who had the narrower concept of literature) and something postmodern, something prudish Sigrid Löffler. Karasek had not kriterienlos but open.

His own earlier pseudonym was Daniel Doppler. The cheerful Janus. Under this bill anyone known name he also wrote three theater comedies. They were not Shakespeare and Molière not, but at least one plot was pretty awesome. Even in ancient compartment of page Anchor dud. A husband is allegedly on a business trip abroad, in fact he is with his mistress – and the booked plane crashes. The man has survived in bed of her friend, but now sits in the case.



The King’s jester as dream role

Karasek unfulfilled dream was that Wilder, Woody Allen or Helmut Dietl (his favorite directors) had filmed him once. Otherwise of course he succeeded much. In the theater Karasek favorite role of legendary Yorick in “Hamlet” would have been the king’s jester. “A boy,” as Hamlet says, “of infinite jest.” Unfortunately, he had the piece not have its own appearance more, you can find him in the cemetery. On Tuesday Hellmuth Karasek died after many beautiful appearances with 81 years in Hamburg

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