Burkhard Driest

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Burkhard Driest (born April 28, 1939 in Stettin ; † February 27, 2020 in Berlin ) was a German author who first became known through the literary processing of his criminal past; he also worked as an actor , director , screenwriter, novelist, painter and producer.

Life

Childhood and youth

Burkhard Driest was the son of a graduate economist and a piano teacher. In 1945 the father secretly took the family from the Soviet occupation zone across the border to Peine (today Lower Saxony). In 1950 the parents divorced. The children stayed with their mother. Driest suffered greatly from the separation; he often found it flawed not to have a father. In the same year the family moved to Göttingen , where Driest attended the Felix-Klein-Gymnasium until 1957 . Although his school performance was described as good, Driest had to change schools several times as a "conspicuous student". Back with his father, he attended the Ratsgymnasium in Peine from 1957 to 1958. At the Hoffmann von Fallersleben School in Braunschweig, he passed his Abitur in 1961 as the third-best student in his class.

In an anthology from 1995, Driest describes his memories of childhood and youth under the title Halbstark in Peine .

Bank robberies

Driest studied in Kiel , Berlin and Goettingen Jura . Frequent fights and numerous female acquaintances earned him a dubious reputation and conflicts with the police. On May 11, 1965, three weeks before his oral law exam, he attacked the Sparkasse in Burgdorf near Hanover. One of his youthful loves reported him and he was arrested.

After his sentencing on July 1, 1966 by the Göttingen regional court to five years in prison , Driest was sent to the Celle prison, where he took over the representation of fellow prisoners due to his legal education and overwhelmed the prison management with applications and complaints. After three years and four months, he was released early in 1968 for good conduct.

In the ZDF - Talkshow Markus Lanz claimed Driest 1 February 2012, a bank in Dransfeld to have invaded at Göttingen. However, this could not be proven to him, which is why he was acquitted.

actor

After his prison sentence, Driest made his way as a worker in the Port of Hamburg and as a waiter and taxi driver in London before making a name for himself as a writer and actor. He became known straight away through his first work, The Brutalization of Franz Blum , which deals with the time he spent in prison from 1965 to 1968.

Burkhard Driest wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name (1974) directed by Reinhard Hauff and played the role of the bat Kuul as the opponent of Jürgen Prochnow in the lead role of Franz Blum. Thereupon he received an offer from Peter Zadek , who was in charge of the Bochumer Schauspielhaus at the time , to play the leading role of Stanley Kowalski alongside Rosel Zech in Endstation Sehnsucht .

In 1974 Burkhard Driest was a guest on Dietmar Schönherr's talk show The Later the Evening with Romy Schneider and Bubi Scholz . During this live performance Romy Schneider touched Burkhard Driest, who was wearing a black leather jacket, on the arm and explained: “I like you. I like them very much. ”Attentive viewers recognized that these words were a variation of her text from the film Sissi , in which she had said in the same tone about Emperor Franz Joseph (played by Karlheinz Böhm ):“ I love him . In fact, I love him very much. ”This gesture caused a series of headlines and Driest's name recognition skyrocketed.

In 1975 he wrote the series Between Eighteen and Twenty for NDR . The theme of the films was the problem of apprentices. Driest made sure that some of the roles were filled with apprentices. From 1978 on he worked with Lukas Heller on the script Son of Hitler based on an idea by Udo Lindenberg and on other scripts for Paramount Pictures , United Artists and 20th Century Fox .

In 1980 Driest was charged with rape by his colleague Monika Lundi in the USA. The incident is believed to have occurred during a joint acting class in Santa Monica , California. The responsible judge Laurence J. Rittenband , who was also responsible in the proceedings against Roman Polański , held the allegations unbelievable and sentenced Driest to a fine of only $ 500 for negligent bodily harm.

After the publication of a non-fiction book on the poetics of film drama, Driest taught at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. In 2010 he started writing the first part of his memoirs. He also made a name for himself as a painter.

The writer Johanna Driest is the daughter of Burkhard Driest. Driest died in Berlin at the end of February 2020 after a long illness at the age of 80.

Filmography

As an actor

As a screenwriter

Other works

As a novelist

As a playwright

As a stage actor

As a non-fiction author

  • The Poetics of Drama for Screenwriters , 2001

As a director

  • Anna's mother , 1984

As a producer

  • 1978: Hitler's Son - Director: Rodney Amateau, USA
  • 1981: Kalt in Columbia - Director: Dieter Schidor
  • 1982: Querelle - Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Awards

  • Prix ​​Italia for the script Shame

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Actor Burkhard Driest dies , zeit.de, published and accessed on February 28, 2020
  2. ↑ Self-portrait of childhood and youth in: Florian Langenscheidt (Ed.): With us at home. Celebrities talk about their childhood. Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-430-15945-8 .
  3. ↑ Burkhard Driest in the Goltz Gallery. Retrieved March 28, 2017 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Driest, Burkhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author, actor, director and producer
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 2020
Place of death Berlin