Arnim Dahl

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Arnim Dahl at the age of 65.
Arnim Dahl's tombstone in the cemetery in Holm (Pinneberg district)

Arnim Dahl (born March 12, 1922 in Stettin ; † August 3, 1998 in Wedel ) was a German stuntman .

Life

His father Hermann Dahl was German champion in artificial jumping and his mother was an athlete. Arnim Dahl became German youth champion in jumping in 1938. He left the city high school in Szczecin without a degree and trained as a carpenter and bricklayer. After serving in the Second World War , Dahl performed as a clown and artist in Hamburg as early as 1946 . He already showed a preference for daring tightrope acts , which would later make him famous. From 1949 Dahl also appeared in films. Dahl got his first film experience in a film from Rolf Meyer's Young Film Union, which was looking for a double for jumping from a moving motorcycle into a duck pond. Then he applied to Walter Koppel's real film as a stuntman. His first film here was Shadows of the Night . In Eugen York's film , he climbed a wall and fell through a glass roof. As a result, he received more orders. In Nur ein Schatten , Dahl, standing in the corner on the Reeperbahn, animated Hans Söhnker to a fight - in Der Schatten des Herr Monitor he and Carl Raddatz fought a nerve-wracking chase through gutters and granaries to the Port of Hamburg.

In 1952, the director Kurt Hoffmann hired him for his comedy Klettermaxe as a stunt double for the main actor Albert Lieven and his opponent. Europa-Verleih had Dahl climb up house walls in 22 West German cities to advertise the Klettermaxe film.

From then on, Dahl was the first stuntman in German film, who doubled stars such as Heinz Rühmann , Curd Jürgens and Kirk Douglas in around 40 productions , and was also one of the film stars of the post-war period. Right from the start he claimed to embody a new type of artist as a “sensational actor”: “The artist in the jersey with a kick and drum roll no longer pulls. The effect is much stronger when someone in a street suit puts their life on the line and people say: this is one of us. […] Better one and a half double somersaults elegantly and in a good mood than three with strength of will and sweat. The audience wants diversion and not an artistic college on the triumph of concentration. "

In 1959, he became internationally known for a spectacular stunt when he did a handstand on the roof railing of the Empire State Building in New York . His jump from a 47 meter high crane into the harbor basin of Wilhelmshaven , where he broke his spine and had to spend a year in hospital, attracted no less attention . Dahl suffered a total of more than 100 broken bones. According to his own statements, Arnim Dahl had to be hospitalized a total of 37 times in his stuntman career.

For a short time in the early 1960s he also found employment in television as a presenter and artist in children's and youth programs such as sports, games, tension and games without limits . During this time Arnim Dahl became, among other things, an integral part of the early television program of the SDR . Here he appeared from 1963 on in the series Hazardous Living - 101 of film artistry and in the ten-part series Circus Dahl . This made Dahl a central character of early child and youth entertainment in the SDR. As a stuntman, Dahl also became the face of many advertising campaigns for various companies, for which he performed daring stunts in many German cities. For example, he was the face of the advertising campaigns of the Deutscher Ring insurance group for many years . For Goliath-Werke Bremen, he jumped through the window of a room on the second floor into an open Goliath convertible on the street. The companies had copied the sensational advertising campaigns from American firms.

In 1992 Dahl withdrew into private life at the age of 70. He had his last appearance as a stuntman at the end of August 1992 at the Hamburg Alstervergnügen .

Arnim Dahl died on August 3, 1998 in Wedel of complications from cancer. He is buried in the cemetery in Holm (Pinneberg district) . Dahl's estate was handed over to the German Film Museum in Frankfurt am Main in November 1998 , including film recordings of his stunts as well as his stuntman paraphernalia.

Quote

"Better to work ten minutes of fear than a month." (Motto)

Filmography (selection)

Moderations

  • Something is wrong here (1960–1961)
  • One Forward - Two Back (1961)
  • Living Dangerously (1963–1964)
  • Circus Dahl (1965)
  • Old Cities - New Games (1968–1969)

literature

Web links

Commons : Arnim Dahl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c d Dahl lives dangerously. In: Der Spiegel 2/1953. January 7, 1953, pp. 26-28 , accessed July 16, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c Arnim Dahl: Several broken bones. In: Der Spiegel 20/1964. May 13, 1964, p. 64 , accessed March 13, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Bye, climber. In: Hamburger Morgenpost . August 6, 1998, accessed March 13, 2019 .
  4. ↑ January 27, 1963 - Arnim Dahl on German television. In: Chronicle of the ARD. Retrieved March 13, 2019 .
  5. ↑ A firework of art and commerce. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. August 31, 1992, accessed December 27, 2019 .
  6. ^ Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main: Collection addition: Arnim Dahl estate (1922–1998). (pdf, 6 MB) In: Filmblatt 10/1999. Cinegraph Babelsberg e. V., Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Film Research, August 26, 1999, p. 47 , accessed on July 16, 2019 .
  7. ↑ This motto was quoted in numerous obituaries by Dahl, u. a. in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 7, 1998.
    See also TV Wednesday, March 11, In: Der Spiegel 11/1987. March 9, 1987, p. 262 , accessed July 16, 2019 .
  8. ↑ a b Armin Dahl. In: filmportal.de. Retrieved March 13, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Dahl, Arnim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German stuntman and artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 1998
Place of death frond