For his 80th birthday: Cabaret artist Gerhard Polt on a journey through time in Schwabing

Created: 05/07/2022 09:06

By: Klaus Vick, Peter T. Schmidt

Gerhard Polt turns 80: he looks back on his career on a walk through Schwabing.

© Marcus sleep

Gerhard Polt is 80 years old.

We accompanied him on a walk through his old university district of Schwabing.

A comedic-philosophical journey through time.

Munich – Gerhard Polt is on time.

ahead of time.

Meeting point art academy near the Siegestor in Schwabing.

But he has to go again – to the parking machine.

As he turns toward the car, he holds up a two-euro coin and suddenly a rascally grin crosses his face.

"The city is starving," he says.

Is that still the private person Polt or already one of his stage characters?

Difficult to say, because the great cabaret artist, who is able to inspire an entire audience with a “Oh ha” thrown into the silence and celebrates his 80th birthday on Saturday, keeps his private life carefully covered.

Today, after all, Polt - also a philosopher, admonisher and comedian - gives an insight into a phase of his life, albeit a long one back.

Munich: Gerhard Polt turns 80 - on a journey through time in Schwabing

So on this beautiful spring day, Gerhard Polt made a special drive from Schliersee to the city.

In the university district, where he, a schoolboy from Altötting, once spent his holidays with his grandmother.

It's a journey through time.

A search for clues at original locations of a turbulent post-war childhood.

And that's not all: It was here that he also found the inspiration for his radio play "As if one were a badger in its den", published in 1976.

A lesson in gentrification long before the term existed (article below).

"Everything is new here," says Polt over and over again.

From Akademiestrasse, he points to a front of houses on Türkenstrasse: “Over there, there were the Turks.

That was the enemy.

If you were captured, that was bad.

Then you were tortured.” On this walk, Polt alternates between subtle irony and seriousness.

The post-war ruins were a dangerous playground.

He remembers: “One day a house wall fell over.

I was a little further away.

Then there's dust - and suddenly two children have disappeared.

They were never there.

That was it.” Nevertheless: “I have to say, this world was incredibly attractive to me,” admits Polt.

“Altötting, on the other hand, was a lame thing.

I grew up there in a butcher's shop, and that was great.

But this landscape of ruins was unbeatable.”

80th birthday: Gerhard Polt talks about the first children's carnival in the corner house on Adalbertstraße

Today, the images of ruins from the Ukraine tear the glorifying veil from the images of childhood.

He can't look at the reports for long, says Polt.

"Otherwise I can never sleep.

It's pressing on my airways.

It's so horrible.” Polt is also one of the signatories of the open letter to Chancellor Scholz, in which 28 intellectuals warn against the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine.

Polt directs his steps to Amalienstrasse, his childhood home.

He talks about the first children's carnival in the corner building on Adalbertstraße, where the "Bar Tapas an der Uni" is located today, about the first pizzeria in Munich, about a laundry, the charcoal dealer and the Lichtblau carpenter's workshop.

Yes my, all history.

Just like the money he earned as "Kegelbua".

Polt often doesn't come here anymore.

At home, he says, he feels more in the area between the Kammerspiele, the valley and the Viktualienmarkt.

But his memories are alive.

He can think of an anecdote for almost every building.

The house where the grandmother lived, in a backyard at the back of the university, has long since been replaced by a new building.

And right next to it, "that's where the girl from Schneeberger lives".

Gisela Schneeberger, his congenial partner in the cult television series "Fast wia im Echte Leben" and in many of his movies.

Munich: One begins to suspect where Gerhard Polt draws the inspiration for his characters

Polt stops again shortly before Schellingstrasse.

The Café Schneller already existed back then.

Ms. Schneller was a passionate confectioner, he says.

"One day, I wanted to eat ice cream with my friend, the shutters were down and a woman said: My God, right, poor woman Schneller!

Now she's dead." Whereupon a second woman replied: "Yes, horrible, and just before Easter, when she was so attached to the Easter business."

One begins to suspect where the gifted observer and meticulous collector draws the inspiration for his characters and stories.

They are taken from real life, brought to new life with a seemingly limitlessly changeable voice.

The dialect, in which Polt can draw these figures in much more detail than in written language, makes them authentic.

You might think they are nice neighbors.

All the more oppressive when they suddenly reveal themselves to be narrow-minded philistines and petty minded people, unscrupulous profiteers or incorrigible racists.

Gerhard Polt: "The stench of fish has swept over the Prinzregententorte"

Café Schneller has survived the years, but it didn't have it easy back then because there was a fish shop next door.

“The stench of fish has swept over the Prince Regent cake.

The Schnellers suffered from that,” Polt recalls.

But one day the fish shop was gone and a bank moved in, whereupon his grandmother said: "Money doesn't stink." In the Schneller, on the other hand, there was a cat in the display between the Prince Regent cake and cheese cream: "Stinky cozy.

That's how it was," says Polt with a smile.

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The cabaret artist is stopped several times by passers-by: are you allowed to take a selfie with him?” Polt smiles: “Go here!” How often does that happen to him?

Again this rascal smile steals into the face: "Am Schliersee ned so vui." Not that the fans would be a nuisance - on the contrary.

He just doesn't pride himself on his notoriety.

And so Polt quotes Gerhard Polt when asked about the large number of his prizes and awards: "Every prize relentlessly seeks its winner."

He prefers to give credit to others.

This becomes apparent when he turns into what was once enemy country, Türkenstrasse.

Georg-Elser-Platz is where the Türkendolch cinema used to be (now Café Zeitgeist), where visitors had to get up in the middle of the Tarzan film so that the cinema woman could put more briquettes in the oven.

"If Elser had been successful in his assassination attempt on Hitler, it would certainly have made a difference in world history," says Polt.

He certainly sees himself as a political person, just not as a regulars' table politician.

He leaves the regulars' table to his stage characters.

He owes Gerhard Polt's stage career to many coincidences and encounters

He and his fans owe Polt's stage career to many coincidences and encounters.

In the 1970s – he was already over 30 at the time – the course was set.

The husband of one of his wife's colleagues, who later became Munich cultural advisor Jürgen Kolbe, discovered Polt's talent for storytelling and encouraged him to write his first radio play, the "Badger".

The great Jörg Hube brought him onto the stage of the Kammerspiele and bravely endured that the “monster of stage presence”, consuming a roast pork, stole the show.

Neighbor Gisela Schneeberger and her husband at the time, the director Hanns-Christian Müller, paved the way for television, bringing Polt's world of ideas into a form suitable for television.

After all, it was coincidence that brought Polt and the Well brothers together in 1979.

"I liked what they did and they liked me too, and we've given each other our hearts ever since," Polt recalls.

Polt has not counted how many appearances they have made together since then.

"But Stoffrl Well claims that we drove about three million kilometers in the car."

Around 50 CDs and DVDs, a good dozen films and TV productions, 21 books, five major stage programs, but above all countless appearances in which Polt shows his greatest strength: a presence that is second to none.

All of this turned out to be more than what was planned.

But what Polt made of it inspires young people and mature audiences to this day.

“I can only say thank you for the fact that I was able and allowed to do all this,” says Polt humbly.

It is possible that success is similar to prizes and awards: it relentlessly seeks out its genius.

You can find more current news from Munich at Merkur.de/Muenchen.