Roger Willemsen: The anti-philistine – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Roger Willemsen death must be a misunderstanding: Roger is always an agent on behalf of the living. I have seen him often working on obituaries and funeral speeches, it was very important to him: The banality of dying oppose the brilliance of his speeches, the mourners agitate for the now common cause of life, celebrating the memory and all in a rage against death . Floating He succeeded every time.

Roger Willemsen entered a stage and after a few minutes, took an almost perceptible, collective transfer: They all wanted to be like him. Quick-witted, well-read, well-traveled, committed and intelligent. And backstage, because everybody wanted to protect him. He was always surrounded by people who wanted him good, would have done anything for him, because they knew that one does not come so again. He then seemed invincible.

The people trusted him, not only the colleagues urban knowers, academics and hipsters – his followers went far beyond. He acted as an intermediary between the world of literature, music and art and the German Province. Familienunternehmer loved him as intimately as craftsmen and pensioners.

A market research showed again that it arrives particularly in older, not particularly educated housewives from rural areas and met really. If appropriate groups were waiting for him or recognize him, he whispered entranced: “My target audience!” He returned this affection without restraint and did not have to adjust, because he was without a conceit and without fear of the people.

Once he mused jokingly about in thrillers so popular phrase: “The victim must have known his murderer!” And he reasoned in mock Schurkenhaftigkeit: “I know the people well, let me also everyone in!”

He scoffed the odd

He was the subject of a completely unexpected displays of affection. Otto Graf Lambsdorff had spontaneously outed as a fan, as Jürgen Möllemann. A wealthy entrepreneur once put him a very expensive Mont Blanc pen to, simply because Roger had mentioned in a text to have lost his own. Students wrote him letters that never went unanswered.

We often aligned, which had in its editorial mission “Willemsens week” to prepare, because it times the people of the homeless newspaper again; there, a school newspaper or the Member Journal of Amnesty International hours of interviews “Hinz & amp Kunzt” and so time was running out.

He brought with reliable mockery for all Quotenberechner, personalities on German TV, as they were never again to see again. We had an issue almost finished designed and prepared, when he told us delighted we could all unload again, our only guest was Raoul Krauthausen, a then 17-year-old radio journalist who suffers from brittle bone disease. It was a very special, very funny show, which also aroused the interest of viewers.

Much of the guests were foreigners who had to be interpreted, but he also asked multifaceted, old German personalities like Walter Kempowski, Berti Vogts or Hans-Jochen Vogel on stage. Once the significant poet Robert Gernhardt was a guest, then very many viewers asked about his name and work – they discovered him only on television.

Subversion meets vaudeville

Roger saw this work as artful blend of vaudeville and subversive political activity that had the advantage exercised in joyous part of a long party be able to. He appreciated luxury and sensual side of life, rejoiced in art and music, but his real drug was working.

His stint was stunning, said he understood it well, to shield themselves from pesky issues. Once when we were nearing record received the news that the director of the program has broken on the way to the studio the leg, Willemsen asked on the phone: “Now you call me the same again and say: Roger, we have the problem dissolved. ”

He was also of criticism does not discourage, because he is not listening. His harshest critic was himself. When he was in the broadcast times not in shape, it took him not even to say.

What did not exist with him were gray, inconsequential working days. Every present person was baptized with a new nickname and considered within the shortest time with anecdotes, incorporated into a finished web of art experienced and fabricated stories. That was just hilarious and uncalculated generosity. Always something monstrous had happened, which we still had no idea he had discovered a forgotten movie star at the end of the world had almost dueled.

He used even hostility – always against the mainstream

Willemsen was surrounded by many friends, but he used with detective zeal, even intimate enmities. he found hardly anything as funny as the news that a hitherto inconspicuous German actor or presenter had put on a so-called media consultant. And because there will also regularly went wrong, it was a reliable source always renewed joy.

But if everyone agreed on this or that crooked figure the public stage when the juste milieu outraged about this or that incompetent politicians, soccer coach or Schlagerfuzzi him a great gentleness came over: “Is the not really a great gift? ”

Roger Willemsen was a complicated man with the gift to the very simple, grand gesture, as when he refused an extremely high fee in a split second, because the requesting company was involved in arms deals or when it was, in the rehabilitation of people to help the less fortunate than he.

When there office times too hard drive with the entertainment when he no longer einkriegte and no regular work longer possible, all only annoyed calling his name, he sometimes apologized with his Rhenish origin, threw a long leg in the air and distributed air kisses: “I just can not stop, I’m eternal Funkemarieche!” Therefore, he could only go on Carnival Monday.

This blasphemous, lustful, pot-smoking, crowing genius is irreplaceable. We will work very nicely, indeed have to fight, not to end without him in a Republic of philistines.