Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans-Joachim "Kuli" Kulenkampff (born April 27, 1921 in Bremen , † August 14, 1998 in Seeham , Austria ) was a German actor and television presenter .

Kulenkampff (1966)
Kulenkampff, center (1969)

biography

Kulenkampff was the second son of the Bremen merchant Friedrich Wilhelm Kulenkampff (1893–1964) and his wife Else Kulenkampff (1895–1968), née Pfeifer. The Kulenkampffs are an old (first mentioned in 1495) and well-known Bremen family. The wealthy family lived in Bremen- Schwachhausen , Parkstrasse 68. Kulenkampff's maternal grandfather was a pianist and music professor. One of his father's cousins ​​was the famous violin virtuoso Georg Kulenkampff . His older brother Helmut (1920–1977) held the chair for anatomy at the Saarland University Hospital in Homburg .

Kulenkampff was active in several sports clubs (cycling, tennis) in his youth. In 1939, after graduating from the Lettow-Vorbeck-Schule (today Hermann-Böse-Gymnasium) in Bremen, he studied at the drama school of the Deutsches Theater Berlin , where a. a. Agnes Windeck was his teacher. He served in the Wehrmacht from 1941 and was deployed in the war against the Soviet Union . There he amputated several frozen toes by hand and had other traumatic experiences. The war effort became a taboo he seldom talked about, and he left the room crying when watching war films of the 1960s. He made his debut in 1943 at the Bremen Schauspielhaus and also played in theaters in Austria and Switzerland. At the end of the war he had to go back to the front in Berlin and was taken prisoner by the British. From 1947 on he appeared regularly in Frankfurt am Main in the Kleiner Theater im Zoo (today Fritz Rémond Theater ). One of his greatest successes was the role of General Harras in The Devil's General by Carl Zuckmayer .

In 1950, Kulenkampff also began working as an announcer at Hessischer Rundfunk , where he was also part of the Frankfurter Weckers team . His first show Wer gegen Wen ? , started on August 29, 1953 at the 18th major German radio, phono and television exhibition in Düsseldorf . , with which "Kuli" became a favorite of the television audience because of its charm and quick wit . In 1958 and 1961 Kulenkampff played together with Heinz Erhardt in the films Always the Cyclists and Three Men in a Boat . His commercials for the pipe and tobacco company Stanwell with the slogan Three things a man needs: fire, pipe, Stanwell also attracted a lot of attention at that time . With another trademark, the exceeding of the broadcasting time, he set a record as early as 1961 in the program Kleine Stadt - very big with 75 minutes above the regular broadcasting time, which lasted 46 years, until Stefan Raab in Schlag den Raab in 2007 exceeded it with 103 minutes .

From 1964 onwards, Kulenkampff hosted the quiz show One Will Win 43 times , known as the EEC for short, but initially ended his activity in 1969 regardless of the extraordinary success. In the following years he worked in various television formats, which were all prematurely discontinued due to lack of popularity , including the Saturday evening game shows Good evening, neighbors and eight past 8 as well as the talk show Feuerabend . At the latter, he sat around an open fire with three prominent guests. The program format was ahead of its time, but did not find enough viewers.

After these failures, the ARD decided to revive EWG , which in 1979 (first show on September 15) again achieved great success. The series came to an end in 1987, when Kulenkampff allegedly stopped for reasons of age.

In 1993, Kulenkampff unexpectedly hosted a Saturday evening show for the last time. After Wim Thoelke had given up the moderation of the ZDF council show Der Große Preis after many years , Sabine Sauer was supposed to take over the show. The ZDF then decided in favor of Kulenkampff, which Sauer only found out from the press. The broadcast date was postponed from Thursday to Saturday evening. Kulenkampff moderated programs according to his own ideas, for example, contrary to the rules of the game, asking for a substitute question. Or else he accidentally betrayed the solution himself by asking, for example, “What is the name of this Vesuvius?” But because the program was mostly broadcast in parallel to competing shows on ARD, audience participation again fell short of expectations. After only six issues, Kulenkampff returned the show. The Grand Prix was then moderated by Carolin Reiber until the end of 1993 .

After a serious operation, in 1997 and 1998 he presented three times the educational show he designed himself between yesterday and tomorrow , which was originally to be broadcast as a recording on Sundays in the afternoon program of the ARD. Kulenkampff refused because he insisted on a live broadcast. Thereupon the lead Süddeutsche Rundfunk (SDR) as well as the ORB and the WDR agreed to broadcast the quiz series on Saturday evening in their third programs . Because of its demanding level, the series did not achieve the target ratings , so it was discontinued, which is said to have hit Kulenkampff very much.

After the end of the first EEC season, Kulenkampff went on guest tours with the same small touring theater over and over again for the next 25 years . From 1985 to 1990 he could be seen almost 2,000 times as a reciter of the Night Thoughts before the nightly broadcast of the first . From 1990 to 1991 he hosted at RTL plus the literature telecast coolies book club . In 1997 he was on stage for the last time as Georg Friedrich Händel in the two-person play Possible Encounters by Paul Barz .

family
Grave of the Kulenkampff family

In 1946, Kulenkampff married Gertraud (Traudl) Schwarz (1922–2001), who later became known as a children's book author. With her he had three children: the daughter Merle (* 1949) and the sons Till (called Burli , 1953–1957) and Kai Joachim (* 1959). In 1957, his wife drove home with the children from a holiday home in a serious accident in which Till died. In contrast to his wife, Kulenkampff rarely spoke about this stroke of fate; it was the second taboo of his life.

His adopted home town was Seeham in the Salzburger Land in Austria. His urn was buried in the cemetery of the Frauenstein pilgrimage church ( Molln municipality / Kirchdorf an der Krems district ) in Upper Austria .

Controversy

Kulenkampff provided in the broadcast quiz with no title on October 10, 1959 a first scandal when he viewers with "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, [...] in the Federal Republic, the GDR [...]" welcomed and did not choose the usual terms “ Soviet occupied zone ”, “Soviet zone” or “so-called GDR”. In particular from circles of the CDU , but also the SPD , he received massive accusations, as this was a "recognition of the injustice state in Central Germany ".

Politically, he did not mince his words. In 1969 he openly supported the SPD chancellor candidate Willy Brandt against hostility .

Kulenkampff caused a scandal on January 15, 1988 as a guest on the NDR talk show when he reinforced Willy Brandt's statement (from May 12, 1985) that the CDU General Secretary Heiner Geißler was "the worst agitator since Goebbels " by he called him agitator "worse than Goebbels". After the broadcast, Kulenkampff said: "Why didn't I just say 'the worst since ...' instead of 'worse than ...'? No carrion could have driven my car there. ”Two weeks later, on January 29, 1988, Kulenkampff was invited again to the NDR talk show, this time with his opponent Heiner Geißler, to whom he finally apologized publicly. In 1992 he was quoted in Die Zeit that the comparison was a "mix-up": "I meant Mr. Stoiber because he said the National Socialists were also socialists."

Filmography

movie theater

Television (selection)

  • 1958: leaves in the wind
  • 1972: The Secret of Mary Celeste
  • 1974: Captain Senkstakes Adventure (TV series)
  • 1979: Another opera
  • 1985: A man clears the ship (10-part TV series)
  • 1988: Münchhausen's last love
  • 1992/1993: The Great Freedom (8-part TV series)

Television broadcasts

Quiz shows

  • 1953–1956: who against whom?
  • 1956–1957: Two on one horse
  • 1957–1958: The lucky four
  • 1958–1959: seven in one go
  • 1959–1960: Untitled quiz (after a short time renamed: The big throw)
  • 1961: Small town - really big
  • 1964–1987: One will win
  • 1971/1972: Good evening, neighbors
  • 1973: eight past 8
  • 1977: How would you like it?
  • 1993: The Grand Prize
  • 1997–1998: Between yesterday and tomorrow

More broadcasts

  • 1975–1976: Fire evening
  • 1985–1990: Night Thoughts
  • 1990–1991: Kulis Book Club

Television documentaries

  • 2008: An evening for Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff - The nation's coolie . Documentation, Germany, 90 minutes, script and direction: Christian Breidert. Produced by NDR television and Hessischer Rundfunk.
  • 2011: Legends - Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff . Portrait, Germany, 43 minutes. A film by Philipp Engel, produced by Hessischer Rundfunk.
  • 2018: Kulenkampff's shoes . Documentation, Germany, 92 minutes, written and directed by Regina Schilling . Created on behalf of the SWR .

Radio plays (selection)

Works

  • Hans Ludwig Kulenkampff: genealogical tables of the Kulenkampff family (Osterholzer branch). Bremen 1968.
  • Learn to sail with Hans Joachim Kulenkampff. A course up to the A certificate. Heyne, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-453-41096-3 .
  • Carola Herzogenrath: Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff on German television. Characteristic forms of moderation. Scientists-Verlag, Bardowick 1991, ISBN 3-89153-016-1 .
  • Georg Schmidt: Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff. A boy from Bremen. Wartberg, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2000, ISBN 3-86134-982-5 .

Awards

Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff's star on the Boulevard der Stars in Berlin

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Uwe Waldmann: Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff . Dossier, Hamburg 2012.
  2. ^ Munzinger Archive, 1988
  3. ↑ a b Nikolaus von Festenberg: A Mozart of the conversational tone . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1998, pp. 99 ( online ).
  4. ↑ a b c Report by Philipp Engel with statements from family members in Kulturzeit , April 6, 2011 7:20 pm, 3sat
  5. ↑ TV Today 22/2014; P. 16
  6. ↑ "This pen is the greatest!" In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna September 18, 1979, p. 19 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  7. ↑ Will Frauenstein now become a "Kulenkampff pilgrimage site"? ( Memento from April 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Interview with Johannes Silberhuber, pastor of Frauenstein. (accessed on March 30, 2012)
  8. ↑ Telemann: TELEVISION / FERNSEH-SPIEGEL: Kuli-Aufstand / Von Telemann . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1959 ( online ).
  9. ↑ Solveig Grothe: "Since Goebbels the worst agitator in the country!": Kulenkampff and Geißler . In: one day . Spiegel Online . November 22, 2010. Archived from the original on April 25, 2011. Retrieved on April 25, 2011.
  10. ↑ An evening for Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff - Der Kuli der Nation on ard.de (accessed on August 3, 2014).
  11. ↑ Legends - Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff on daserste.de (accessed on April 29, 2012).
  12. ↑ Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff. A dossier. Medienwissenschaft Hamburg, August 12, 2012, accessed on June 26, 2020 .

Web links

Commons : Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Kulenkampff, Hans-Joachim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pen (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor and television presenter
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1998
Place of death Seeham , Austria