GEK group

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GEK-Gruppe (author group Gernhardt-Eilert-Knorr) describes the collaboration of the three authors Robert Gernhardt , Bernd Eilert and Peter Knorr .

history

Beginnings (1971–1973)

Robert Gernhardt and Peter Knorr met in Frankfurt am Main as employees of the satirical magazine " Pardon " and worked together from 1971. Gernhardt was 34 at the time, Knorr 32 years old. Their first joint works were “Funk für Fans” and “Die lastfrequenz” on Hessischer Rundfunk (HR). For these programs, the two provided scenes and skits. The 90-minute Christmas special "What beats us from Santa Claus", also HR, was the first radio entertainment program to be exclusively designed with Gernhardt / Knorr texts .

From now on they concentrated on the joint writing of current satirical and comic texts for the radio.

As early as 1972 Gernhardt and Knorr had their own radio series, which were initially directed by HR editor Werner Klein and later by Peter Knorr himself: “Dr. Strange Sunday assortment, or ear tube ready for battle - a current curiosity show "and" HELP - a satirical auxiliary magazine ".

Gernhardt and Knorr also wrote so-called "Euro-Ring broadcasts", which were broadcast across the ARD as comical entertainment programs.

Work as a trio (1973–1975)

Two further Christmas specials were created in collaboration with Bernd Eilert (23 at the time), who was involved in writing the texts. In 1973 Eilert von Gernhardt / Knorr was raised to the status of co-author in the so-called "Musical Comedy Show" "Südpolmädel", which was produced and broadcast by Hessischer Rundfunk at the end of 1974. The music was from Frank Duval .

Gernhardt, Eilert and Knorr wrote the radio series “Dr. Seltsams Radio-ABC ”, the 23 episodes of which were initially produced and broadcast by HR and later taken over in whole or in part by other ARD stations. In total, hundreds of comic texts, scenes, skits and dramolets were created for the radio series, many of which were available in different versions.

Working together (from 1974)

Some of the texts reappear in the early stage programs of comedian Otto Waalkes . Then the collaboration began: Waalkes took over texts from Gernhardt / Knorr for his live show and had all of his stage and television programs written by the Gernhardt / Eilert / Knorr team of authors for the next 30 years.

The occasional collaboration has turned into a regular and permanent collaboration between the three authors, with fixed working hours and the constant development of new entertainment programs and media projects. In addition, the three participants had scope for their individual and completely independent literary or journalistic activities.

Filmography

In 1975 work began on the ten episodes of “ Dr. Muffels Telebrause ”, a television comedy series commissioned and produced by HR, which was broadcast nationwide on ARD and later repeated in five highlight episodes in the third programs . Knorr was a co- director .

In 1978 the LP Da geht's lang was published by Verlag Zweiausendeins and a further radio series was created for HR under the title “Brainstorm-Thought Strength 13”.

Literature (from 1979)

In 1979, Gernhardt and Knorr founded the monthly satirical magazine " Titanic " as partners - together with Chlodwig Poth , Hans Traxler and FK Waechter . The team of authors Gernhardt / Eilert / Knorr now regularly wrote articles for Titanic under the acronym GEK, in addition to working for radio, television and Otto Waalkes.

1980 Das Buch Otto was published by Hoffmann and Campe-Verlag , edited by GEK. It contained only texts by Eilert / Gernhardt / Knorr / Waalkes, was number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list for ten weeks and sells over a million copies including the paperback editions.

In 1983 the FS entertainment department of Südwestfunk Baden-Baden provided the group of authors with the film material from the old family series “ Forellenhof ” for a funny experiment. In an elaborate process, GEK dismantled the image material into its individual parts and put it together in a completely different way, re-cut, re-texted and re-synchronized to create two new films with the old actors: When Hackensack comes. - A therapy weekend at the Forellenhof and a visit to the old box - A poet meeting at the Forellenhof . The “Therapy Weekend” was never broadcast, but years later this experiment still had consequences.

In 1984/85 Gernhardt / Eilert / Knorr wrote the screenplay for Otto - Der Film , which, directed by Xaver Schwarzenberger and produced by Horst Wendlandt, became the most commercially successful German post-war film. GEK also wrote the scripts for Otto - Der neue Film (1987), Otto - Der Ausserfriesische (1989) and Otto - Der Liebesfilm , the latter co-directed with Bernd Eilert and Otto Waalkes. The 2nd book Otto , written and edited by GEK, was published by Rasch and Röhring .

From 1987 to 1990 the exhibition "25 Years of the New Frankfurt School" showed in more than 50 German cities the work of the draftsmen FW Bernstein , Robert Gernhardt, Chlodwig Poth, Hans Traxler, FK Waechter, as well as (audiovisually prepared) the authors Eilert, Gernhardt, Knorr and Eckhard Henscheid .

As a late consequence of the “Forellenhof Experiment”, the film producer Horst Wendlandt granted the GEK Group the right to use the image material from around 30 old Edgar Wallace films. A completely new television format was created in 1995 for RTL in 13 episodes: Otto - The Series . Even back then there was software that made it possible to blend newly shot scenes with Otto Waalkes with the old pictures in such a way that, carefully re-dubbed, completely new contexts and comic scenes resulted. Directed by Bernd Eilert.

Every year from 1996 to 2006, on Holy Saturday, an author reading with Robert Gernhardt and Peter Knorr - often with Bernd Eilert and guests from the New Frankfurt School - took place at the winemaker Ulli Stein's in Alf on the Moselle . The Westdeutscher Rundfunk recorded and broadcasts, and over the years the audio books The Sharpest Critics of the Elche ... , Mallorca-Toscana , Horch, a closet goes through the night! , The Well Ness and Pisa Monster and the Volgen .

The botanical short drama Erna, the tree needling , a Christmas play by Eilert / Gernhardt / Knorr, appeared with illustrations by Volker Kriegel first in Haffmans Verlag and later with S. Fischer . It is now in its 6th edition and with translations from the Hessian original into ten other German dialects.

On August 11, 1999, on the occasion of Knorr's 60th birthday and the solar eclipse that took place on that day , Eilert, Gernhardt, Knorr held a public reading of their Christmas texts in the second-hand bookshop of the Frankfurt bookstore Schutt. This reading, which was later repeated in Munich , resulted in the audio book Erna, der Baum Nadelt ( Heyne Verlag ). The third Otto book can be considered the last major joint text work by the three authors: Otto - The Book of the Friesian ( Ullstein-Verlag , 2002).

In the same year, GEK, together with the other authors and draftsmen of the New Frankfurt School, received the “ Binding Culture Prize of the City of Frankfurt”. Afterwards they met again and again for joint readings and appearances. They never set up a joint company or signed any contracts with one another.

Since 1996, GEK has been collecting and processing unprinted texts for a collection of comic dramas to be published in the future.

On June 30, 2006 Robert Gernhardt died after a long illness. Eilert and Knorr gave the funeral orations and honored his memory in the Alte Oper in Frankfurt in autumn 2007 : the New Frankfurt School Orchestra played, Roger Willemsen moderated, FW Bernstein, Otto Waalkes, Bernd Eilert and Peter Knorr read Robert Gernhardts and joint texts.