Helge Timmerberg: You can turn seventy that easy

Created: 03/14/2022, 17:27

By: Katja Kraft

In front of his deceased father's old car: Helge Timmerberg.

Eternal Traveler.

© Katja Kraft

Bestselling author Helge Timmerberg has written a very funny book (Piper Verlag) about getting older.

He, who has just turned 70 himself, writes openly about physical decline.

In the interview, Timmerberg talks just as freely from the soul about age, drugs, women and gender stars.

He arrives in his late father's battered Mercedes.

The silver star on the bonnet has long been torn off.

"I'm not going to fix that.

Nobody steals your car that way,” says Helge Timmerberg.

The travel journalist and bestselling author has just turned 70.

He wrote a very funny book about it.

"Lecko mio.

Turning seventy” (Piper, 188 pages; 20 euros).

Now he presented it in the Munich Volkstheater.

We met Timmerberg in advance at the Hotel Mariandl.

"I always sleep here because you can still smoke in the rooms." Well, then: have a cigarette or two, Mr. Timmerberg.

Is there anything good about getting old?

You write: You might still look after every skirt, but you don't have to run after it anymore...

Helge Timmerberg:

That's right.

It's like driving past a flower meadow.

I can enjoy them, but I no longer have to get out and pick the flowers.

It's more relaxed than before.

So aging has its benefits too.

Helge Timmerberg:

You have to say it to yourself, otherwise it would only go downhill.

No, mentally I don't feel any worse today than I did when I was 30 or 40. That comes from experience.

As you get older, you're not so stupid anymore.

And because you're not so stupid anymore, you don't do so many stupid things anymore.

As a result, you don't feel stupid as often because you did something stupid.

When I see my past drug excesses, it's always funny in hindsight.

But these polar zones that I ended up in were anything but funny at the moment.

Today I am much more disciplined.

And yet in the book you briefly dream of being 17 again.

"And just as stupid." Seriously?

Everything at the beginning?

Helge Timmerberg:

I ​​also asked myself this question while writing.

The privilege of the young is the ocean of life that lies ahead.

That's a wealth, that's madness.

Now I have to ask myself: Do I want this wealth back - with all the suffering?

I once had lovesickness for two years, it almost killed me.

You wake up in the morning and have 15 seconds of rest, then the pain comes back up.

Do I want those two years back as an example?

Of course it would be awesome to be 17 again with the knowledge of today.

What would you do?

Helge Timmerberg:

I ​​would save Jimi Hendrix.

I was three houses away when he died.

Was pure coincidence.

Back then in Notting Hill.

Now that I know, I'd terrorize his house until they open.

Then I would have saved Hendrix.

Helge Timmerberg and culture editor Katja Kraft in Munich's Mariandl.

© kjk

Do you like the 17 year old you used to be?

Helge Timmerberg:

I ​​love him!

But if he came in here now...

and babbled at me!

what would he say

Helge Timmerberg:

When I was 17, I took a lot of LSD and thought it would save humanity.

According to the motto: "Take all of that now, so you can see through what's really going on!" And then there's the testosterone thing.

What got me into trouble with sexuality!

Today I would say: It's better to just go to the whorehouse, you'll get a lot more out of it without injuries than with romantic love.

So bad?

Helge Timmerberg:

I've always fallen deeply in love.

All barriers were open then.

Does time heal all wounds?

Helge Timmerberg:

I ​​think so.

But scars remain.

And although they remind us of our mistakes, they are made again.

You might not make the same mistake again, but others will.

Now you can get angry: That was a mistake, that was another mistake... Or you say: Ah, experience, experience!

I'm pretty positive about that at the moment.

I'm not old yet.

I feel good.

Why is that?

Helge Timmerberg:

Probably because I've never made enough provisions that I could say: I'll go to a finca and breed donkeys.

I have to keep working, keep writing.

I often regret that, on the other hand: When do I feel best?

When I'm writing and the writing is going on.

Then I don't care.

How many cigarettes I smoke, how much we smoke, how much I drink.

Because this story fills me.

That there are still deadlines: How nice is that!

And yet you quarrel with the development that is happening for authors.

Key word: gender.

They don't.

Because: "The concerns of the language are more important to me than those of emancipation."

Helge Timmerberg:

Yes, I understand the sensitivity.

When I think about it, my gender had had nothing to say for thousands of years.

And I would always read: writer, driver, then I would also say: And what about me as a man?

So I can understand that.

But I value creativity.

And that's why I say: Okay, then we need our creativity to adapt the language to gender equality in such a way that it doesn't just become more and more boring.

Do you have any suggestions?

Helge Timmerberg:

That is the challenge.

What really pisses me off is this duplication.

writers.

Since you have already filled almost two lines just for naming a profession.

The asterisks too.

I will not do that.

So if you don't want to read my texts - okay.

I think that as a journalist you have to fight a bit for the language.

Most male editors who are so staunch genderists are not real men.

When it comes to men who are total feminists, I ask myself: What's the matter with them?

Gender life is based on polarity.

My God, how much I like to be out and about with women!

If all women were wiped out and there were only men: I would take my own life in an instant.

Do you handle criticism well?

Helge Timmerberg:

I ​​can completely deal with the criticism "Hey, the pig hasn't changed!"

And if someone says: "The pig can't write either"?

Helge Timmerberg:

Then it's a problem.

Then I have to doubt his sanity.

I'm bad at handling that.

You write: "I was never politically correct, it was enough for me to be humanly correct." Have you always been?

Helge Timmerberg:

No.

But human correctness was the standard.

Politically correct is ideology, humanly correct is character.

Your character checks out what you feel is right.

Then it is real and not a fake doctrine.

You have to be guided by that.