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Karl Dall, 1941-2020
Photo: Marcus Brandt / dpa
An evening in Hamburg, a good two years ago.
Karl Dall had just been a guest on the "NDR Talkshow" and when the little after-show party at the station came to an end, he suggested we go for a nightcap in a bar right next to his apartment in the Eppendorf district .
He'd appeared on pretty much every talk show, said Dall in the car.
Only Ina Müller had never invited him, he didn't know why either.
Dall looked perplexed.
And after a break from art he added: Good, he once greeted Müller with "Well, you old lesbian", "but that's no reason!"
I don't know if the story was true.
In any case, she was outrageous and outrageous, a nag, a man's joke - just a real Dall.
And that at the height of the MeToo movement, when women around the world stood up against sexual harassment and assault.
Dall also commented on MeToo that evening, with artificial indignation: "That's why I can no longer play half of my program."
There are numerous arguments for finding all of this terrible.
Sexist.
Misogyn.
However, anyone who took the effort to look behind the fictional character quickly realized: Dall was not a misogynist, not a misanthrope at all.
But a highly professional artist who had found his role: It consisted of falling out of the role.
He said what not to say.
Did what is not appropriate.
Dall, the public one, was a master of embarrassment, a king of piggies.
If you imagine Germany as a big family, he was the uncle you feel ashamed of at every celebration.
Seen in this way, the figure of Karl Dall was not much more embarrassing than many men of her time whose behavior it reflected.
One who never said no when someone asked for help
However, friends and colleagues got to know Dall very differently: educated, sensitive, considerate.
He was the one who never said no when someone asked him for help.
And if it was only students who asked him if he wanted to take part in one of their projects.
And who knows if he would have ever become a comedian if nature hadn't endowed him with a droopy eyelid.
As a child he was teased for it, later he preferred to joke about his appearance himself. With hits like "Millions of women love me" he caricatured the macho man who overestimated himself and his effect;
he called his autobiography "Close your eyes and through".
Dall became known at the end of the sixties with Insterburg & Co, the stupid group around Ingo Insterburg.
After their dissolution, he started his solo career.
At that time, jokes were not yet checked for morality and virtue, but were simply allowed to be stupid;
those were the years in which Dieter Hallervorden, Fips Asmussen and Otto Waalkes also established themselves.
Dall found his largest audience as a sidekick on the Saturday night show "Understand Fun", where he played the projectionist.
Here, too, the roles were clearly assigned: the hosts Paola and Kurt Felix, Mrs. and Mr. Saubermann from Switzerland, smiled neatly, while "Karl" spread chaos;
sometimes they put him in his place.
While he was still halfway family-friendly on the ARD show, he acted completely uninhibited on private television.
As in his RTL talk »Dall-As«, where from 1985 he turned all the virtues of hosting into their opposite.
For example, when he announced the pop star Roland Kaiser with the words: "Well, sing now so that we can get it over with", whereupon he left the studio offended.
Inge Meysel, in turn, asked whether she would "do everything wrong again" in her life.
At least the guests got drinks, served by models in bunny costumes.
Never in - and therefore never out
Only once in Karl Dall's life did he get serious about his relationship with women.
In 2014, the Zurich Public Prosecutor brought charges of rape and attempted coercion;
a Swiss journalist reported him.
The woman herself had a criminal record for stalking, she had already approached Udo Juergens.
Dall was acquitted.
It was a time that gnawed at him a lot.
His fear that something would stick to him despite his acquittal was not fulfilled.
His career went on almost seamlessly.
Dall was never in, so he was never out.
He was just there, always with the same hairstyle, beard and sleeveless vest.
Most recently he was in front of the camera for the ARD telenovela "Rote Rosen".
Its use should have spread over several consequences.
But while filming in Lüneburg, he suffered a stroke, the consequences of which he died on Monday, according to his family.
Karl Dall was 79 years old.
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