Status: 18/08/2023, 18:38 p.m.
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His good-natured voice has been heard in millions of German children's rooms for decades: Jürgen Kluckert has died, the voice of Benjamin Blümchen and numerous Hollywood stars.
Berlin - The speaker Jürgen Kluckert, known from the "Benjamin Blümchen" radio plays, is dead. This was confirmed to the German Press Agency from industry circles. Previously, colleague Julia Bautz had written about it in the short message service X. Kluckert, who lived near Potsdam, was 79 years old.
Kluckert was a busy voice actor and radio play speaker. He is best known for his role as Benjamin Blümchen. In the mid-1990s, he had taken over this main role of a talking elephant from Edgar Ott after his death in the popular children's series. Since then, more than 70 episodes have been created with his characteristic good-natured, deep voice as the centerpiece. Fans of the animated series "SpongeBob SquarePants" still have him in their ears as the voice actor of the crab character Mr. Krabs.
A graduate of the Ernst Busch State School of Drama, he dubbed many Hollywood stars, including Chuck Norris, Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, James Brolin, Robbie Coltrane and Louis Gossett Jr. In the 1980s version of the television series "Magnum", he voiced Roger E. Mosley in the role of the helicopter pilot "T.C.". Kluckert was also seen on German TV again and again as an actor, several times with supporting roles in "Tatort".
Jürgen Kluckert has died at the age of 79. © Sebastian Reuter/The HISTORY Channel/obs
For many, a voice from their childhood
Kluckert had initially lived in East Germany in the post-war period and, among other things, played at the Maxim Gorki Theatre for twelve years. "I left the GDR in 1980," he said in a History Channel interview in 2022. "I then also played theatre in the Federal Republic of Germany, but ended up more and more in the dubbing studio. In the GDR, someone once said to me: "You have a very pretty voice! Try it at DEFA-Synchron! You can still earn some extra money!" And then I did that."
He had "dubbed so many people, but I haven't met any of them yet," he recalled in the interview. Inheriting the role of Benjamin Blümchen was a challenge, he described in an interview. "Edgar Ott died in 1994. And he also voiced Sinclair in "The Dinos". That was the first thing I inherited from him, because I sounded a little bit like him, that is, when I change the voice a little bit. I couldn't do that with my normal voice." During the first recordings, he said "every time I said a sentence, (...) previously listened to a sentence by Edgar. In the meantime, of course, I don't need that anymore. We have become freer and faster."
Julia Bautz wrote on X: "Today I am thinking of a voice from my childhood, his warm manner, his warmth and his wonderful family. Have a good trip, take care of yourself up there and thank you for Benjamin Blümchen, Mr. Krabs and just endless childhood." The portal "PC Games" had also reported on the topic. Dpa