As of: February 27, 2024, 10:00 a.m
By: Rudolf Ogiermann
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Looking back and looking ahead: Lisa Fitz plays “Perennial favorite – The anniversary program” for the last time in the Munich slaughterhouse on Tuesday and Wednesday.
© Dominic Reichenbach
She notes an increasing general amateurism, complains about “language bans” and calls some of her colleagues “system-immanent court jesters”.
As usual, cabaret artist Lisa Fitz doesn't mince her words in the interview.
When Lisa Fitz debuted with “The Holy Hur” in 1983, cabaret artists who performed solo and with their own lyrics were an absolute rarity.
That was more than four decades ago, and the now 72-year-old still has a desire to be on stage.
This Tuesday and Wednesday at 8 p.m., the award-winning artist can be seen again in the Munich Schlachthof with “Dauerbrenner – The Anniversary Program,” but the next prank, “Avanti Dilettanti!”, is already in the works.
Is “Dauerbrenner” primarily a “best of” or a program with current numbers?
Lisa Fitz
: No, it's not a best-of, I rejected that because it would have been too boring for me.
Everything is new except for two or three songs.
The anniversary program is a look back - also socio-politically - at the sixties, the sixty-eights and the seventies, the Beatles, the Stones and the CSU with Franz Josef Strauss.
The second part is about what was learned during the lockdowns - or not - with the question of what the future holds, robotization including sex dolls, AI and dystopia instead of utopia.
The oldest number in the program is “I bin bläd” from 1972 and the newest “Deutschland quo vadis”, a look back and a look ahead to how our country will develop.
Your next program is entitled “Avanti Dilettanti!”, and you quote Gustl Bayrhammer as Master Eder with the sentence “There must be a bleed, but there will be more!” To what do you attribute this “proliferation of stupid people”? And how do you want to deal with them and possibly “heal” them?
Lisa Fitz
: Oh God no, I don't have a messiah complex, I'm not that megalomaniac.
But - also due to economic austerity measures - cheap workers are increasingly being used in hotlines, in call centers, at hotel receptions, at parcel services, energy companies, in sales, who are really stupid.
The enthusiasm for education hasn't exactly grown in recent years.
I could go on and on about how phone calls go and who provides “information”.
That's where you reach for your brain.
And your own stupidity often makes things even more difficult.
Only Bavarian stoicism can help.
And a lot of love for people.
This “Have everyone gone crazy?” finding is very reminiscent of Monika Gruber, whose first book was called “And Deliver Us from the Stupid”...
Lisa Fitz
: That's an awesome title, isn't it?
Do you feel like “sisters in spirit”? Do you exchange ideas?
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Lisa Fitz
: I can say that I discovered Monika Gruber and encouraged her.
That was at a cabaret workshop that I gave at my former acting school, Zerboni.
She was by far the best and her talent was clear to see.
Monika is more direct than me, even more Bavarian and often hits the number 12, but always entertaining.
Please don't forget that a cabaret artist never demands to agree with her opinion.
You can chafe at the statements, be inspired to reflect, and feel free to reject perspectives.
What we have in common is backbone and sincerity - without the pretense of just being met with approval.
Monika's background is different, earthy, down-to-earth.
I come from an artistic family where poetry and literature took up a lot of space - from an early age.
We talk on the phone every now and then and exchange ideas.
Monika Gruber told us in an interview a few months ago that she felt “a deep personal dislike from colleagues with whom she was once friends.” Do you feel the same way? If so, where do you think that comes from?
Lisa Fitz
: Unfortunately, it also happened to me that I was attacked by a colleague in the media.
In the era of Dieter Hildebrandt, something like this would have been unthinkably unfair.
To be honest, I don't care that much.
Often, with grumpy colleagues, visitors become as little as the hair on their head.
It will take care of itself. My favorite metaphor: “If you sit on the bank of the river long enough, you will eventually see the corpse of your enemy floating by.”
It was a long time ago that you were part of the “Windshield Wiper” team in the now legendary program about Chernobyl, from which the BR disappeared. How do you view the program today, the “irradiated grandfather” number and the station’s reaction?
Lisa Fitz
: It was a huge scandal at the time, and everyone stuck with Hildebrandt and the “windshield wiper.”
A lot of people could take this solidarity as an example today!
The episode was shown in every pub and in every theater large and small and ultimately had more viewers than it would have had on Bayerischer Rundfunk.
My opinion: Viewers can form their own opinion and press the on/off button.
Without governess BR.
If “Windshield Wiper” and Dieter Hildebrandt’s cabaret still existed today, it’s actually unthinkable that you would still be there, right?
Lisa Fitz
: I would definitely still be there.
Dieter Hildebrandt loved me – and I loved him.
He always said: “You Bayern sum it up so brilliantly.” He appreciated my straightforwardness.
And he had the brain to classify the statements.
The brilliant “windshield wiper” episode after September 11, 2001 would probably no longer be possible today.
Bruno Jonas, among others, retrospectively described Hildebrandt's cabaret as a “social democratic cabaret”.
Lisa Fitz
: Sure, Dieter Hildebrandt was a social democrat, but the SPD always got its fat, as befits cabaret.
And he even got to tease the program director.
Imagine this in our educational state today!
I often long for the old SPD, depolluted and Esken-free.
What do you mean by “educational state”?
Lisa Fitz
: Well, you don't really need to explain that anymore.
My formerly beloved Greens are exaggerating everything in tandem with the SPD, which was also formerly beloved.
Woke intrusiveness, gendering, language bans, other requirements.
They insist in an annoyingly pushy manner instead of using reason to seduce people into the behavior they want.
You might like to change under certain circumstances, but we're not in boarding school.
In an interview you described fellow cabaret artists as “systemic court jesters” – who do you mean specifically?
Lisa Fitz
: The problem is that this quote was about five to six years ago, I can't remember exactly.
But “system-immanent court jesters” means government cabaret artists with rabbit-foot cabaret.
Cabaret is not there to pander to the incumbent government or the media mainstream or donors and sponsors.
In Austria there is a list of cabaret artists who received a lot of money from the government during the Corona period, via detours.
In Germany you can also research this, but I prefer to stay out of it.
Cabaret steps up, not sideways or down.
It’s often said “questionable” lately.
But cabaret has to ask because everything is worthy of being questioned.
Do you suspect that cabaret artists in Germany receive money from the government for
playing certain government-compliant numbers?
Who are you thinking of?
Lisa Fitz
: Surely you don't want me to act as an informer?
Let's put it this way: Public broadcasters, which are headed by the Broadcasting Council with members close to the party, seem to me to prefer cabaret artists who conform to the government or are rather harmless in their statements, and support them accordingly, sometimes very generously.
The exception is perhaps – still – Dieter Nuhr.
During the Corona period, this was particularly true for entertainers who conformed to the system and who did not question the government's opinions, but rather reinforced them.
Looking back over your long career, are there things you regret and would like to undo?
Lisa Fitz
: Sure, in a 50-year career in cabaret, decisions can sometimes be professionally counterproductive; you often don't listen to your inner voice sufficiently.
But they were personality-forming.
What is better: if you constantly sit in the warm and become soft or if you run out in the cold and rain and toughen yourself up?
Certainly the latter for life experience.