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»Live the way I like it«: Volker Lechtenbrink 2014 on the stage of the Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg
Photo:
Axel Heimken / dpa
When he had long since made up his mind, in 2010, he wrote about his profession: »Actors are egomaniac, mimosa, dream dancer, jealous, always thirsty, always horny, lazy to learn, megalomaniac, unrealistic, irascible, gossip mouths, impostors, cheaters, greedy for money, devoured, addictive , arrogant, depressed, cowardly, childish ", at the same time" extremely lovable "- and plagued by constant existential fear.
For a long time he could not decide whether he should make his way as an actor, artistic director, director, author or singer.
Maybe it was said existential fear that made the decision easier for him at some point.
Volker Lechtenbrink would be Volker Lechtenbrink.
Born in East Prussia in 1944 and raised in Bremen and Hamburg, he was drawn to the theater at an early age.
As a child he had speaking roles for NDR, and at 14 he was in front of the camera in Bernhard Wicki's anti-war film "Die Brücke".
A blond boy with big eyes and an open face - at the side of Fritz Wepper, Günter Pfitzmann, Vicco von Bülow and Frank Glaubrecht.
Felmy as a fatherly role model
After this early international success, he studied acting, including at the Hamburg State University of Fine Arts, and then played whatever came next. These included comedies with Theo Lingen (“Pichler's box office is not right”) as well as film adaptations by Jean Anouilh (“Becket or the honor of God”) or ARD series such as “All my animals”. He played theater in Hanover, Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt - there alongside Hildegard Knef.
He chose colleagues like Hansjörg Felmy and the early deceased Hanns Lothar as his father's role models, whose obituary he quoted in SPIEGEL in 1967 in his autobiography, which was published in 2010: “He was a leptosomic Hans Albers, who still used the virtues of the bad and revealing black market years Schau wore: an underdog, but always brash and relaxed, someone who got away and who cut a good figure both as a dump collector and as a man in the cockpit. "He liked that very much, except for the adjective" leptosome ".
Whoever can speak to Kristofferson can also sing him
In the 1970s he played roles in "Der Kommissar" or "Sonderdezernat K1", but then another career intervened.
With his sonorous voice he was the voice actor for Burt Reynolds, his professional adaptation of Kris Kristofferson carried him even further.
If he could speak to the US star, then he could sing him too.
»Der Macher« from 1976 came about on a whim.
It was an album with musically Germanized country classics from the pen of Kris Kristofferson, he featured the title track in the "Hit Parade", and it stayed in the charts for eight weeks as an average success.
Lechtenbrink, the robust pop singer, appeared on stage.
Eleven long-playing records and twenty singles were to follow, including the rock'n'roll of "Leben, wie ich wie wie es", which he later declared to be his personal anthem, or the ballad "I like" (both appeared on "Herz & Schnauze «, 1982) - which, repositioned, made a further career as a promotional song for a malt coffee. He wrote lyrics for Peter Maffay, among others. As an actor, Lechtenbrink has been increasingly booked for television again since the 1980s, for "Derrick", "Der Fahnder" or "Ein Falls für Zwei".
Lechtenbrink still had the open, but with the right lighting it could also emit something diabolical.
He appeared in film adaptations by Rosamunde Pilcher as well as in those by Inga Lindström, and was in “In aller Freund’s”;
but also to see an episode of »Jerks«: »I've played everything: from murderer to lover, from criminal to comedian,« he said in an interview on his 70th birthday.
He was celebrated in the fall of his career for the lifestyle review, the 2-person musical "Life - The Way I Like It", written by his daughter Saskia.
Or the autobiographical revue »Come on in - songs and stories«, in which he shone as the master of his own career.
In addition, he kept coming back to the theater.
He was artistic director in Bad Hersfeld, was on stage in Hamburg in "Frost / Nixon" and was awarded the Gustaf Gründgens Prize in summer 2021 - as well as for his atmospheric work as a reader of the excellent audio book version of "Die Brücke" (2019).
He was an artist who still displayed the virtues of the bad and revealing 1960s: an underdog, but always flippant and relaxed, someone who got away and cut a fine figure as an actor and singer.
He would have liked to have played a "Frisian commissioner with many quirks", but that never happened.
On Monday, Volker Lechtenbrink died in Hamburg after a serious illness.
He was 77 years old.