Icon: enlarge
Folk actor Michael Gwisdek (in "Hell im Kopf", 2005)
Photo: ddp images
It's terrible, an imposition, actually unacceptable.
Death and Michael Gwisdek don't go together.
Gwisdek, who dealt all his life with the comic, which was not too good for any punch line.
Where should the punch line be now?
Michael was a warrior on the German film scene.
His domain was the comic, he often found it in the tragic.
He was a fool.
That's how he saw himself.
In particular.
The editing suite, the cinema that he had set up in his house, the koi carp in the garden pond, the acting - he was crazy about everything.
A movie fool, a garden fool, a ... fool.
In life, when writing, when playing, he had an unconditional penchant for honesty that took on almost touring-like traits.
This penchant for court foolishness has sometimes threatened his existence.
He blacklisted it in the east, blacklisted it in the west, none of which harmed him.
He managed the feat of making himself both popular and unpopular in both systems.
You loved him anyway.
You couldn't blame him for anything.
"You can learn something there"
Icon: enlarge
Leander Haußmann (left) with Michael Gwisdek (right), in the middle Henry Hübchen
Photo: Eva Schroeder-Oertwig / picture-alliance
His joke did not stop at any ideology.
He laughed and he rubbed himself.
Mainly with Henry Hübchen, his best friend.
Here the transitions from verbal warfare to mutual madigging were seamless, two friends and companions accuse each other of charging;
they were there like Walther Matthau and Jack Lemmon.
To person
Leander Haußmann
was born in Quedlinburg in 1959 and grew up in a family of theater enthusiasts.
After a failed career as a printer, he studied acting at the Ernst Busch School in Berlin and became a director supported by Frank Castorf, among others.
From 1995 to 2000 he was the artistic director of the Bochumer Schauspielhaus, and as a cinema director he achieved great audiences with "Sonnenallee" (2000) and "Herr Lehmann" (2003).
His latest movie, "Stasi Comedy", is due to start in autumn.
Gwisdek was a walking film lexicon, a Till Eulenspiegel who often and annoyingly danced on the nose of his directors.
Despite the big and international films in which he has acted, he was not too bad to play the lifeguard in my film "Haialarm am Müggelsee" for a sum of money and a producer title.
I will never forget the way he said to Hübchen: "You can learn something there! You, always with the same face! You think, grimacing is the whole evening."
He said to me: "Weeste, there we make the shot of" The Good the Bad and the Ugly ", weeste, where the Palace comes into the picture so obliquely!"
He was modest.
He was quick.
And he was a friend.
A big western fan who always wanted to shoot a western.
That is why, during the GDR era, he had two children's pistols filled with lead in order to master Gunslingers perfectly.
As a young actor in an Indian film, he taught those responsible for Defa how a gunfighter should shoot properly.
Now he actually got on his horse and rode into the sunset.
He didn't make a big deal about his talent, which was sometimes brilliant.
(I hear him laugh: "The genius? Nu is good!") He was a folk actor who had reached the greatest goal to be achieved.
And now Gwisdek should suddenly stop joking?
No more films with him?
He is no longer there, the ranks are thinning.
And no one far and wide to fill the gap.
No joke, no punch line.
Michael Gwisdek was a terrific actor, writer and director.
He stood for intrepid, courageous filmmaking.
Let's hold our breath for a moment and listen to the silence: In fact, Michael Gwisdek is no longer.
Icon: The mirror
