How did Erdinger cabaret artist Monika Gruber fare in the Corona year 2020, the year in which she wanted to take a break anyway.
Here is our big interview at the turn of the year.
Erding– Monika Gruber, star cabaret artist from Erding, has a knack for success.
Even during the corona pandemic, the year in which she actually prescribed herself a break, she was not inactive.
She wrote a book together with the journalist Andreas Hock.
Title: "And deliver us from the stupid - From common sense in hysterical times".
It is already in its fifth edition.
We talked to the 49-year-old about her latest work and the side effects of the Corona crisis.
The cabaret artist also reveals her secret recipe for the best penne all'arrabbiata and why 91-year-old Auer Lilli from Grünbach is the epitome of charm for her.
Ms. Gruber, you haven't been on stage for a year.
Not because of Corona, but because you took a break.
How are you doing with that?
Personally, I shouldn't complain because I honestly couldn't have found a better time with the time out I chose.
However, I would have to make appointments for autumn 2021 long ago, and it is unfortunately not yet possible to foresee when culture will return to a mode that is reasonably profitable for everyone.
To be honest, I'm guessing the year 2022. However, I already have offers for two TV series for the near future, and I will continue to work on the script I have already started with Thomas Lienenlüke.
Apart from that, my new homepage - with the many interviews still planned by great, but not necessarily prominent women - keeps me very busy.
So, one way or another: I don't get bored.
Corona changes everything - almost.
How has the pandemic changed the way you view some things?
Corona works like a burning glass: It has made the stupid even more stupid, the hysterical even more hysterical, the suspicious even more suspicious and the lazy even lazy.
And it is precisely in such unsteady and excited times that it shows for me how important family and the few good friends who catch you, comfort you and maybe lift you up in between and vice versa, are.
I - and I think so many others - realized again that it was actually never the big things such as long-distance trips or huge events that really bring you joy, but rather the small matters: a cozy card evening with friends, with our new family dog going to puppy school and things like that.
Although I'm really looking forward to going back to the tavern with my parents on Sunday lunchtime and being able to order an onion roast and knowing that the kitchen at home won't be splashed with fat.
Despite your time off, you were not idle last year and wrote a book together with journalist Andreas Hock, among others.
The title is: "And deliver us from the stupid".
So often you have to get upset about the stupidity of those around you.
Is there still hope?
As I said: The stupid ones have unfortunately not become smarter due to Corona.
In this respect, one can get scared and anxious when, for example, one sees that the cultivated German denunciation is not only enjoying growing popularity again, but is sometimes even wanted by the state.
But of course, like all crises, this pandemic also has a few positive sides.
In terms of the basic mood I'm more of a gentle grunt, but if we don't have to yell at each other on my father's or brother's terrace on Sunday afternoons because there is so little flown, then that has something.
The fact that more people are buying regionally and that the farm shops are enjoying growing popularity is definitely positive.
And maybe we do remember that less is often more: that you don't have to go on a trip to the Maldives or a transatlantic cruise every year, that you don't have to buy a sweatshirt for five euros every week from an international disposable fashion chain needs that you don't have to skis through the floodlit deep snow at night, but let nature have its peace, so that not every young person has to go on a trip around the world after passing their Abitur, but maybe a social year.
Will it happen?
Well
Hope dies last.
Good, but she's dying.
Don't stop at Corona.
You are missing common sense in the current situation.
What would you do differently as a politician?
Criticizing politicians is always easy.
But one wonders why there have been warnings for the last nine months to protect nursing homes and their residents and their staff better - and so far there are neither sufficient rapid tests nor enough effective masks for such facilities.
After the first lockdown, Mr. Spahn also said that it was a mistake to close the trade completely and that this mistake should not be repeated.
And now everything is closed again.
Apart from the fact that I do not think it promising to wear a mask outdoors, there are other measures, the meaning of which one should definitely question: Why do you announce a lockdown before Christmas due to the critical situation, and then there are giant lines in front of and for days to provoke in stores?
It was like seeing someone drowning and calling out to him, “Ah yes, I see you are drowning.
.
.
wait, I'll send you the lifebuoy next Wednesday! ”Mr. Söder was also released from his home quarantine after just one day, on the grounds that there was a suitable ventilation system in his office, while as an ordinary mortal one would at least have a double negative test locked up at home for ten days.
And why hasn't this apparently very effective system from the State Chancellery been built into our schools long ago so that the children don't have to spend hours studying with a soggy piece of cloth in front of their mouths and wrapped in their winter jackets if they ever come back to school? allowed to?
You don't have to understand that, but you have to ask and put your finger in the wound.
They find that people's feeling is getting more and more lost.
Where do you notice this most clearly?
You shouldn't ask me that, but all people who work in some form in a service occupation - whether in a bakery, at the hairdresser's, in the supermarket or as a craftsman.
They will all tell you the same thing: Many customers are no longer just grumpy, but vicious because they have to let go of their frustration and anger somewhere.
But why do you do this with people of all people who, on the one hand, are absolutely nothing for the current situation and, on the other hand, move their bums to work for eight to ten hours every day, while many others push them back and forth in their sweatpants between the couch and the kitchen and call that "home office" at best?
In your book you write a lot about lost
virtues.
Which are most important to you?
In addition to a certain basic courtesy and empathy towards others, I often lack a certain amount of personal responsibility these days.
But our overprotective system has unfortunately created a certain fully comprehensive mentality, which leads to many people shouting for "the state": The state should kindly take my small children from me, the state should educate the young people, care for them Take care of old people, the state has to provide me with a heated apartment, and if the dishwasher breaks down, the state has to buy me a new one.
Nobody asks: Who is actually “the state”?
These are the ones who get up every day and hump between eight and twelve hours a day.
But they feel less every day, and the mass of those who keep shouting: “It's my place!” Is growing.
I think we should start asking again, “What can I do for the community?
How can I help that we pull the cart out of the mud? "
If, for example, everyone in their immediate environment cared a little more about their loved ones in the literal sense, then fewer people would get lonely, especially in these difficult times - a lot would be gained.
An example: A family member of a resident in the Heiliggeist retirement home complained to the home management that the staff was paying far too little attention.
When asked when he was last seen by his mother, nothing more came up.
It hasn't been there once this year.
Okay, he lives near Frankfurt, but I only accept that as an excuse to a limited extent.
Corn monoculture, biogas plants, pig fattening: Why do so many farmers still rely on quantity instead of quality?
Because politics and the majority of consumers leave them no other choice.
Even the farmers who want to switch to organic food completely cannot find buyers because the majority of consumers indicate in every survey that they would like to spend more money on organic food and meat from species-appropriate husbandry.
But when it comes to the sausage and meat counter, for many people only the three usual criteria count again: cheap, cheap, cheap.
The organic share of pork in Germany is around 1.4 percent, around 1.8 percent for poultry and 4.4 percent for beef.
That is why I would still be very happy to thresh the person who invented the slogan “Avarice is cool” with a kilo of cheap chops from Berchtesgaden to Kiel.
This fatal saying changed the basic programming in the minds of many consumers and was certainly the accelerator for our current society, which continues to demand quantity instead of quality.
Strangely, this often does not apply in other areas of life, because you can easily spend 1200 euros on the latest smartphone, while you can safely and without a guilty conscience buy a pound of minced meat for 99 cents.
Which chapter by your co-author Andreas Hock do you like best?
Difficult to say, maybe the section “Love me, gender!” Because it shows in it partly humorous, partly terrifying, how much a phenomenon like the current pandemic is always associated with brutal language.
Humorous because our entire book is primarily intended to entertain.
Frightening, because you notice yourself how used to the rape of our language - and how stupid it is to put a gender asterisk in the term pedestrian, because the male form that has been used for centuries suddenly offends women could.
Men with buns are not your thing.
What does your dream man look like?
Oh, my: He should be as tall as a Scandinavian, but dark like a southern Italian, drinkable like an Irishman, the humiliation of an Austrian and the black humor and good manners of an Englishman.
But very important: He should be able to repair everything at home - as only a Bavarian craftsman can.
Your first book was already on the Spiegel bestseller list, the current one again.
Your performances are always sold out.
Do you succeed in everything?
Oh my, I always say: I'm on stage because I can't do anything else.
And that's right: I'm the absolute technical idiot, and I can't remember anything in connection with technology because I am interested in zero point.
I couldn't even change a car tire if my life depended on it!
I can neither knit nor sew, and when I sometimes look at my ironed clothes, I don't know whether I have ironed them or not, and I prefer to bring them to Ms. Dlouhi.
Unfortunately, I can (still) not cook as well as my mom.
In addition, I stopped playing Depp after nine years of piano lessons, so that I can no longer even read the scale.
I still only speak a fair amount of Italian and am such a whistle in geography that I probably wouldn't even find my way home from Freising without a navigation system.
But I have an incredible amount of space in my brain for useless knowledge: I can, for example, take part in almost all the dialogues from six episodes of “Monaco Franze”.
I also contributed to some of the TV productions that I'm not really proud of.
The list could be continued ad nauseam.
So much for whether I will succeed in everything.
The Auer Lilli from the corner shop in Grünbach is the epitome of charm for you.
Please explain to us what she has and what has been lost to many other people.
She was once asked by a reporter for the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation why she would run the shop at all when it is purely a premium business.
And she replied: “Yes, because I need my customers!” I found that incredibly charming.
In your book you claim that your penne all'arrabbiata are better than in many an Italian restaurant.
Can you tell us your secret tip?
Ha!
Now I'm probably messing with all the Italian chefs, although I have to say: The pino from Dal Vecchio on the Long Line makes wonderful penne all'arrabbiata and I often eat them there.
For myself, however, I tried and fiddled around for a long time until I came across a recipe that works best for me: the onion is sautéed with two cloves of garlic and chilli (to taste), then I add canned tomato pieces and some tomato paste add, rub it off with vegetable stock and then add quartered cherry tomatoes to stew.
Season the whole thing with salt and pepper, add the cooked noodles, stir and serve with plenty of freshly grated parmesan.
When can the
Erdinger look forward to a Monika Gruber in the town hall again?
Phew, if I could say that for sure, then I would probably be a multiple lottery millionaire due to my visionary abilities and would not play at all anymore, but spend most of the time in my holiday home on Capri, which I would have bought in this case.
Further information
about Monika Gruber can be found on her website www.monika-gruber.de.
The current book "And deliver us from the stupid", which she wrote together with the Nuremberg journalist Andreas Hock, is also available in all bookstores in the district, also as an audio book.
Price: 20 euros.