Klaus Lemke is dead: take care, cowboy!

Created: 07/07/2022, 22:24

By: Michael Schleicher

In an elevator, somewhere in his beloved Schwabing: Klaus Lemke (1940-2022).

© Klaus Haag

Klaus Lemke is dead. The legendary Munich filmmaker died at the age of 81.

Read our obituary here.

"Straighten up, cowboy." Was one of his sayings.

Don't cry, that said. Now it's time to bang that sentence into your head over and over again.

Because Klaus Lemke is dead, as confirmed by his artistic companions in the "Münchner Merkur".

Lemke, the rebel director, the Schwabing legend, the street cowboy and self-proclaimed "bad boy" of German film, has died at the age of 81 - a day after Bavarian television broadcast its latest film "Champagne for the Eyes". Gift for the Rest" as a TV premiere.

The documentary is the filmmaker's declaration of love for Munich in the 1970s – the decade in which Lemke established his later reputation as a cult director.

Klaus Lemke discovered Iris Berben and Wolfgang Fierek

As far as the atmosphere in this city is concerned, nobody could fool him for a long time.

At that time, Lemke founded the genre of Munich milieu comedy - with films such as "Idole" (1975), "Amore" (1977, awarded the Grimme Prize) or "A Comic Saint" (1978).

These are works "that have changed the idea of ​​what a Bavarian film can be to this day," he once said in an interview.

At that time he brought amateurs such as Cleo Kretschmer, Dolly Dollar, Iris Berben and Wolfgang Fierek to the film - a principle to which he remained true to his last works: at some point in the course of his career Lemke renounced professional actors as a matter of principle.

Klaus Lemke's breakthrough was "48 hours to Acapulco"

Klaus Lemke was born in 1940 in Landsberg/Warthe in what is now Poland.

He broke off his studies in philosophy and art history in Düsseldorf and worked in the theater.

Fritz Kortner is said to have fired him as an assistant at the Munich Kammerspiele after just four days.

From 1965 he made his first short films.

In 1967, his first feature film "48 Hours to Acapulco" made him famous almost overnight.

Lemke's "Rocker" is still a cult in Hamburg today

At first, Lemke oriented himself strongly towards American and French cinema.

His still stunningly strong Hamburg milieu study "Rocker" caused a sensation in 1971 and is still a cult in the Hanseatic city.

Even then he found his actors on the street.

And it's the language of the street, preferably dialect, that he wanted to hear in films.

“The greatest misfortune is that US actors like Robert de Niro speak German here.

Even in the best dubbing, de Niro speaks Goethe-German.

The subtext of the films is missing.

I bring that in when I work with people off the street.”

Lemke was once part of the cinema establishment

Not only that: When Lemke finally started a film, he didn't have a finished screenplay that he filmed scene by scene.

"The gap between the desks where screenplays are written and life is widening," he liked to complain.

The result is "Augsburg Puppet Show".

And that was definitely nothing for a guy like Lemke.

He wanted to be more rigorous, more independent, above all: closer to life.

He had once belonged to the cinema establishment himself.

He has made films in which he spent as much money on shots from the helicopter as he would later need for an entire production.

When his work threatened to become ready-made goods, Lemke stopped filming and reported from the world as a reporter for “Quick”.

also read

Klaus Lemke's love letter to Munich

Munich: Dude!

This exhibition questions the obsession with youth

"Film must get out of the prison of film funding"

Everything he did later, he paid for out of his own pocket.

Everyone who took part received 50 euros per day of shooting.

The films usually cost a little more than 50,000 euros, he financed half in advance and shot until the money was gone.

Then he took the half-finished material to a broadcaster, usually ZDF or WDR.

In the best-case scenario, he sold the film and finished it with the proceeds.

No one else was so radical and consistent: "Film has to get out of the prison of film funding," said Lemke.

And he lived his life as consistently and incorruptibly as he worked.

Farewell, cowboys!

And we're doing right now.