BR Fernsehen celebrates Günther Maria Halmer: Bavaria's best!

Created: 01/01/2023, 15:40

By: Katja Kraft

"A 24-year-old with the experience of an 80-year-old": Günther Maria Halmer.

© Reiner Holzemer

BR Fernsehen is celebrating Günther Maria Halmer's 80th birthday with a "life line".

And there will also be films by him.

December 5, 2023 is his big day.

An interview for his 80th birthday?

God forbid.

Günther Maria Halmer's wife Claudia asks for understanding on the phone: The 80, her husband doesn't want to focus on that so much now.

The colleagues at Bayerischer Rundfunk probably felt the same way when they asked Halmer for a "Lebenslinien" portrait.

The actor, who celebrates his birthday on January 5, 2023, got involved.

However, he didn't seem to have the time to report again what he had already said in 2006 in a portrait of the "Lebenslinien" series about his childhood and growing up.

Most of this new film, which will be shown on BR Fernsehen on January 2, 2023 at 10 p.m., is based on footage from the old one.

It doesn't matter.

But tell a lot about this man

who subtitled his 2017 autobiography, Views of a Rebellious One.

The great character actor has always shown character as a person.

In his life in which he waged a "constant struggle between reasonable behavior and angry opposition".

Cult: Günther Maria Halmer as Tscharli (centre) in Helmut Dietl's "Munich Stories".

© BR

Born in 1943 - "not a good year to give birth to children".

Grown up in the "small town stalemate" of Rosenheim during the post-war period.

But always convinced that he was called to higher things.

Not for the mundane life of a lawyer his father intended for him.

The legal guardians demanded discipline, he became the class clown, "the Halmer", as the teachers reprimanded him.

There have been many attempts to “reinvent” oneself.

Halmer talks about it very openly.

Army, hotel management school, odd jobs in Paris, and finally labor in an asbestos mine in Canada.

For a long time he only knew what he didn't want.

The role models were always there.

The cinema heroes from Horst Buchholz to James Dean.

In hindsight, from the perspective of anyone who knows the happy ending to the story, Halmer's calling as an actor seems crystal clear.

But that's the way it is: It's often only in retrospect that you realize why all the apparent detours on your own life path were necessary - would you have ever arrived without them?

It is Günther Maria Halmer.

Felt "a 24-year-old at heart and temperament - with the experience of an 80-year-old".

Not the worst combo.

We congratulate!

Special program: Following the "Lebenslinien" (Life Lines), BR Fernsehen will show a episode of the legendary "Munich Stories" with Günther Maria Halmer on January 2, 2023 from 10:45 p.m.

On January 7, 2023 at 8:15 p.m., the feature films “My neighbor, his dachshund & I” and from 10 p.m. “Suddenly Grandpa” will also be shown, in which Halmer plays the leading role.

Both will then be available for three months in the ARD/BR media library, the "Lebenslinien" already now.