First book at 73: From photographer and musician to author

Created: 07/10/2022 07:04

By: Michael Seeholzer

Photographer and musician Hubertus Ametsbichler (73) collects guitars and anecdotes.

He has now put this down on paper.

The Grafinger proudly presents his debut work.

© STEFAN ROSSMAN

The Grafinger guitar collector Hubertus Ametsbichler has published his work "Hubsi, switch at least as Liacht ei".

Grafing - What do a photographer and a writer have in common?

Both take pictures.

One digitally or on photographic paper, the other creates images in the mind of those who read their stories.

Hubertus Ametsbichler (73) from Grafing can do both.

He is a photographer and recently also an author.

The title of his debut work is: "Hubsi, switch at least as Liacht ei".

And of course the book is richly illustrated.

Not only the Grafinger know the "Hubsi" as a musical person.

In the town band he plays the French horn or "French horn", as his instrument was called in earlier times.

The stories in his book, in which he recorded events from his childhood, also deal with earlier times.

There is also space for stories told to him by his father and grandfather.

All in all, small events from the past 100 years come alive again.

You can't write in one go

Hubsi fell out of the nest early on.

At the age of 14 he attended the commercial academy in Bregenz, where he was taught until he was 18.

"That was from 1964 to 1968," he recalls.

Learning abroad?

Unusual for those times.

"For four or five years I have been writing down anecdotes in a notebook that have come to my mind," says the retiree about the development of his first book.

"I wrote correctly for a year and a half," he says.

"I can't write it all down in one go." And he didn't have to do all his homework all by himself.

"A good friend, a senior teacher, read the proof for me".

Hubsi is happy to say that his daughter-in-law was able to “ready to print”, which was also a great help.

In the end, a friend who happened to own a publishing house and lives in Grafing-Bahnhof also helped him.

Role model Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden

This is how the 200-page booklet was published by Dinter-Verlag.

It will cost 18.85 euros, and if you want to know what the strange title is all about, you have to read it all the way to the end.

He will find out that a long-retired police officer who is not entirely unknown in the Ebersberg district played a role in the title – of course without the author and the gendarme having the slightest thought of what such a sentence could become .

Hubsi's wife Maria (71) was also involved, but more is really not revealed now.

This arc of suspense from the title to the last page is not entirely new, as Hubsi admits.

Bruce Dickinson, the singer of Iron Maiden and a multi-talented person, used the same trick in his autobiography "What Does This Button Do?" by the way his guitars are.

He has 22 of them.

"One is played every day so that nobody feels offended," says the musician, who used to successfully run a photo studio together with his wife in the Kirchengasse in Grafing and is therefore well known to most citizens of Grafing and the surrounding area.

Now he has converted the shop into an apartment.

Reading in the box host

Anyone who is on the go on social media will have already encountered the Hubsi with one of his guitar beauties, which he often optimizes according to his own ideas.

A legendary Gibson Les Paul is also one of Hubsi's instruments.

He got it from a musician friend of his, whom he once lent two instruments to himself... But that's another story.

And Sebastian Schlagenhaufer, artistic director of the Stadthalle, also became aware of Hubsi's work on social media.

That's why you can look forward to a reading in the Kastenwirt on Thursday, October 20th at 8 p.m.

"I'm nervous," Hubsi admits.

But he's used to audiences.

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The book: "Hubsi scolded at least as Liacht ei",

Dinter Verlag, softcover, 2022, ISBN-10: 3-944424-08-5;

ISBN-13: 978-3-944424-08-8, 18.85 euros

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