Gerhard Engbarth

Gerhard Engbarth (born July 26, 1950 in Bad Kreuznach ) is a German storyteller, musician and cabaret artist . He lives in Bad Sobernheim .

Engbarth appears with stories and in between plays German dialect - blues . The stories are profound observations and are told by Engbarth's stage character, the everyday philosopher Rolf Schnorrenberger . His homeland, the Nahe valley , and its inhabitants are often the subject of stories. Engbarth plays guitar , harmonica and piano ; his titles are original compositions.

Life

Gerhard Engbarth was born on July 26, 1950 in Bad Kreuznach an der Nahe. He attended elementary school and the Emanuel-Felke-Gymnasium in Bad Sobernheim . After graduating from high school in 1969, he began studying medicine and then switched to social pedagogy, which he also did not complete. In 1972 he joined his father Oswald Engbarth's office machine company. After his death in 1979 and his mother's death a year later, he sold the company in 1981 and has since performed as a blues musician. As early as 1972, however, he had already made public appearances as a storyteller, cabaret artist and musician.

In 1982, an encounter with the bluesman Louisiana Red led to the activity as a tour companion for many well-known American blues artists, which lasted until the turn of the millennium. He has appeared on recordings for Bukka White , Champion Jack Dupree , Louisiana Red and Carey Bell . On the tours he accompanied Roosevelt Sykes , Barney Kessel , Tal Farlow , Odetta , The Five Blind Boys of Alabama , Georges Moustaki , Stann Webb Chicken Shack, among others .

During this period Engbarth began to write stories in dialect.

From the beginning of the 1990s, he wrote chansons and songs (e.g. Lebensbaum - sixteen healing songs with Iris Wenz), short stories (e.g. in Noblesse, Stil und Eleganz by Gerhard Köpf , ed.) And fairy tales for adults and performed with programs from this repertoire.

The SWR produced a few small home movies with him.

From 2004 to 2009 he performed as a stage character “Rolf Schnorrenberger” and his family, portrayed by Beate Henn, Moritz Schlarb and Jochen Weinel, in sketches and theater programs. Engbarth developed the special program of healing humor for rehabilitation clinics . Schnorrenberger expresses the search of the near country between Hunsrück , Palatinate , Rheinhessen and Saarland for its own identity.

From 2008 on he published his dialect column “Alla then” in daily newspapers.

Since 2009, Engbarth has moderated the Sobernheimer Runde , in which a guest in Bad Sobernheim has a conversation in front of an audience. Within an hour he tells him about himself and his life, childhood, professional career, goals and dreams, successes and failures. The 100th Sobernheim Round took place on June 6, 2018 , in which Engbarth himself was the guest. In addition to unknown people, celebrities were also among Gerhard Engbarth's guests. From the political field, among others, Julia Klöckner , Kurt Beck and Malu Dreyer . Also personalities from the entertainment like the TV presenter Jens Hübschen and the actor Rainer Furch , as well as from medicine through the doctor André Borsche . Guests of the church were the President of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland Manfred Rekowski and the religious sister and founder of the internationally active aid and lobby organization SOLWODI , Lea Ackermann . Engbarth welcomed the university professor Hubertus Mynarek from science .

Awards

• Culture Prize of the Kochendörfer Foundation (1998)
• Würth Literature Prize (1999)
• Winner of the 2007 art prize from Lotto Rhineland-Palatinate
• Laureate of the 2008 Lotto Rhineland-Palatinate Art Prize

Discography

• "Dust my blues" (1982)
• "Blues from Peace," accompanied by Louisiana Red, 1983
• "Inspiration-Stomp", EMI-Electrola, accompanied by Blind John Davis u. Louisiana Red, 1985
• "Sisyphus' Blues" accompanied by Carey Bell and Louisiana Red, 1995
• "Tree of Life - sixteen healing songs" with Iris Wenz, 1997
• "If we couldn't be friends - 20 songs for children and parents", 1998

Texts

• "The Blues from the Blues" - Encounters, Edition Venceremos, Rüsselsheim 1977
• "Silence burns under the skin" - poetic texts, edited by Kristiane Allert-Wybranietz , Munich , 1991
• "Noblesse, style and elegance - prose, poetry, scenes and essays ", edited by Gerhard Köpf , Konkursbuchverlag Gehrke, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-88769-145-8 .
• "It's good that I meet her - or: How the cigarette broke up with me" and other dialect stories, Leinpfad-Verlag, Ingelheim am Rhein 2005

Web links

• Works by and about Gerhard Engbarth in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of Gerhard Engbarth