Henry Vahl

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Henry Vahl, 2nd from left (1976)
Autograph session with Heidi Kabel in Kiel in December 1968

Henry Vahl (born October 26, 1897 in Stralsund , † July 21, 1977 in Hamburg ) was a German actor . After a career of more than forty years, which took him to numerous stages, especially in northern Germany, he came to the Ohnsorg Theater in Hamburg in the 1950s , where he became a popular actor who played mostly weird, older guys in comical roles. Through the television broadcasts of the theater, he achieved nationwide fame and became the popular "television grandpa".

Life

youth

Henry Vahl was born in Stralsund in 1897 as the eldest of four children of the seaman Franz Vahl and the housewife Frederike Constantine Karolin Vahl; his brother was the actor Bruno Vahl-Berg , his sister Lissy the mother of the actor Edgar Bessen . Even as a child, Henry Vahl performed several roles in his hometown. After his father's fishing trawler , who started his own business as a fisherman in 1901 , was destroyed by a storm surge in 1905, the family moved to Kiel in 1906 . After a broken printer apprenticeship, Henry Vahl worked in a dairy and as a lift boy in the Hansa Hotel, where the director of the Kiel City Theater, Karl Alving , noticed him in 1914 and gave him his first engagements. In 1916 Vahl played his first leading role in the play Peterchens Mondfahrt ; since 1915 he also worked at Howaldtswerft to avoid military service.

Weimar Republic and Third Reich

In 1918 Vahl went to Lübeck to the Hansa Theater . There he met Germaine Koch, with whom he became engaged and moved to Braunschweig in 1920 , where the couple married on January 31, 1925. In the autumn of 1926 Vahl moved to Bernburg an der Saale as an actor and director , but the theater was closed in the economic crisis in 1929, after which he moved to Berlin and after minor roles with Max Reinhardt and appearances as a film extra at the Deutsches Theater under Reinhardt's successor Heinz Hilpert was engaged. In 1940 he and his wife got an engagement in Karlsbad , where in November 1941 he celebrated his 25th stage anniversary. But in the same month, Germaine Vahl's work permit was withdrawn because she was considered a so-called “ half-Jewish ”. She went into hiding and hid in a gazebo near Ratzeburg until the end of the war . Henry Vahl did not know her whereabouts, but was in contact with her through her mother. During interrogation by the Secret State Police , he said she was missing. In 1943 he was called up for military service and appeared in the troop support on the Eastern Front . After the war, reunited with his wife, he moved to Berlin.

Hamburg

1950 Vahls went to Hamburg, where Henry Vahl in Flora Theater and the Theater in the room of Helmuth Gmelin occurred also in Frederick Schütter cub Theater (today's Ernst-German Theater ), where he the old farm worker Candy in a stage adaptation of the Romans of mice and humans existed. In March 1958 the play “ Meister Anecker ” by August Lähn , directed by Walter Scherau, with Jochen Schenck in the title role and Otto Lüthje in the role of journeyman cobbler Matten, was to be performed at the Ohnsorg Theater when Lüthje fell ill shortly before the premiere. The theater hired Vahl to replace him, and he stayed on permanently. In the following years he appeared in more than 100 roles at the Ohnsorg Theater, often together with Heidi Kabel . The title roles in “Schneider Nörig” and “Vater Philipp”, Ewald Brummer in “Tratsch im stairwell” and Mandus Sötje in “Mien Mann, de fohrt to See” were particularly significant.

The role of the old, quirky and strongly alcohol-inclined Matten, however, became his paragon. The television broadcast of the new production, directed by Hans Mahler on November 13, 1965, was a great success. According to Heidi Kabel, the Ohnsorg Theater was inundated with calls, congratulatory telegrams and flower broadcasts after the broadcast. Henry Vahl became very popular nationwide and a darling of the public through the television broadcasts of theater performances on the NDR as well as through many guest performances. In 1967 he was awarded the “Bronze Screen” award. From 1962 to the 1970s he often appeared in the popular NDR entertainment show Haifischbar . Henry Vahl had a great success on television with the two-part TV crime film "The Red Wallet" (1966), in which he played a leading role.

Last years

The graves of Henry Vahl, his wife, his brother and his wife in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg

In 1972 Vahl left the Ohnsorg Theater. Officially, he left for reasons of age, but unofficially, a rift with the artistic director Günther Siegmund was the reason who had succeeded Hans Mahler, who died in 1970, and who wanted to rejuvenate the ensemble and refrain from casting Henry Vahl after the 1969/1970 season. Mahler is said to have promised Vahl to stage “Meister Anecker” again and thereby enable him to say goodbye to the stage in his star role, but Siegmund did not feel bound by it.

Although Henry Vahl could now remember his lyrics from bad to worse, he began in 1973 at the St. Pauli Theater of Kurt Collien act, where he still 43 times in "Master Anecker" and in 1974 even 168 times as " lemon Jette was" on stage ( a Hamburg original , actually a woman who is traditionally played by men on stage). In 1975 his wife died and in February 1976 he suffered a stroke from which he did not recover.

In his book Der Aufmacher , Günter Wallraff reported that in the months before Vahl's death, the fate of the increasingly frail actor was marketed in a double-digit number of "Bild" newspaper articles . In the Hamburg central editorial office of "Bild" there is said to have been a movable photo montage by Vahl with a coffin lid that can be raised and lowered.

Henry Vahl died on July 21, 1977 at the age of 79 in Hamburg of circulatory failure . His grave (No. AD5 / 158-159) is next to that of his brother Bruno Vahl-Berg in the Ohlsdorf cemetery .

Honors

The Henry Vahl Park in Eimsbüttel

In the vicinity of his apartment in the Eimsbüttel district , a green area was named after Henry Vahl, the Henry Vahl Park . In 2014, in the Gaarden district of Kiel, the square in front of the house on Iltisstrasse 49, where Vahl lived from 1912 to 1919, was named Henry-Vahl-Platz .

Pieces

Movies

Radio plays

  • 1957: De Möllner Gerechtigkeit - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1958: The Seven Days of Anna Pauly - Director: Wolfgang Schwade
  • 1958: De Doden sünd dod - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1958: Kattengold (after Johann Hinrich Fehrs ) - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1958: Merkur over Hamburg - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1958: Hamborg sien Uhlenspeegel - Director: Günter Jansen
  • 1958: Right mutt right blieven - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1958: De Daag ward kötter - Director: Günter Jansen
  • 1958: De stahlen Pastor - Director: Walter Bäumer
  • 1959: Dat Licht - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1959: Abelke Bleken, de Hex vun Ossenwarder - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1959: Vun den Padd af - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1959: Ward off! - Director: Ivo Braak
  • 1959: Spök in'n Dörpen - Director: Otto Lüthje
  • 1959: Gott sien Speelmann (after Otto Tenne ) - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1959: Mudder Elend and Ehr Beerbohm - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1959: De Börgermeister vun Lütten-Bramdörper - Director: Hans Mahler
  • 1960: An'e Eck von de Melkstroot - Director: Rudolf Beiswanger
  • 1960: Up eegen Fust - author and director: Hans Mahler
  • 1960: De Negenhunnertjahrfier (by Konrad Hansen ) - Director: Hans Robert Helms
  • 1960: Bott för de Doden (based on Hein Bredendiek ) - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1960: Court in Potenza - Director: Gustav Burmester
  • 1960: De Lost Söhn - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1961: Report about apple trees - Directed by Gustav Burmester
  • 1961: Report from Apple Trees - Director: Gustav Burmester
  • 1961: Besök in the past - directed by Otto Lüthje
  • 1961: Marschmusik för't Leben - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1961: Eli (based on Nelly Sachs ) - Director: Heinz von Cramer
  • 1962: A life with animals: Carl Hagenbeck (1) - Director: Wolfram Rosemann
  • 1962: Kaspar Ohm un ick - Director: Bernd Wiegmann
  • 1962: De D Jungs (based on Gisela Schlüter ) - Director: Günther Siegmund
  • 1962: Not dat Geld alleen - Director: Friedrich Schütter
  • 1963: De Püjazz (based on Günther Siegmund) - Director: Hans Mahler
  • 1963: The triangular dream (2nd evening) - Director: Kraft-Alexander zu Hohenlohe-Oehringen
  • 1963: Das Obdach - Director: Fritz Schröder-Jahn
  • 1963: Mitgift ut Calcutta - Director: Bernd Wiegmann
  • 1963: Stopover - Director: Fritz Schröder-Jahn
  • 1963: Spöök vun güstern (based on Hein Bredendiek) - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1963: De Soot - Director: Friedrich Schütter
  • 1963: Appels in Navers Gaarn (based on Walter A. Kreye ) - Director: Ivo Braak
  • 1963: Plaat hett dat dahn! - Director: Hans Robert Helms
  • 1963: Diederk schall freen (based on August Hinrichs ) - Director: Bernd Wiegmann
  • 1964: Ask the captain - Director: Wolfgang Harprecht
  • 1964: Dat Arvdeel - Director: Otto Lüthje
  • 1964: The official mold with a cold - Director: Jo Hanns Müller
  • 1965: Een leegen Hannel - Director: Hans Tügel
  • 1966: Duppelte Räken - Director: Heini Kaufeld
  • 1966: De swarte Hahn - Director: Curt Timm
  • 1966: Dat Sympathiemiddel - Director: Curt Timm
  • 1969: The Gray Wolf - Director: Otto Kurth

literature

  • Henry Vahl: How life plays. Germany's most popular television grandpa, written down by Rudolf Kinzel . Seehafen-Verlag Blumenfeld, Hamburg 1977.

Web links

Commons : Henry Vahl  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Michael Busch: Vahl, Henry Adolf Emil Otto . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie. Lexicon of persons . tape 2 . Wallstein, 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1366-4 , pp. 425–426 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ A place in honor of an Ohnsorg legend. In: Flensburger Tageblatt. July 23, 2014, accessed August 26, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b c Gerd Spiekermann : 100 years of the Ohnsorg Theater . The Hanse, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-434-52600-5 , p. 83 ff .
  4. ^ Günter Wallraff: The lead story. The man who was with "Bild" Hans Esser . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1977, ISBN 3-462-02663-1 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  5. ↑ knerger.de: The family grave of the Vahls
  6. ↑ Martin Geist: Memory of the grandpa of the nation . In: Kiel News . Kieler Zeitung Verlags- und Druckerei KG GmbH. July 22, 2014. Retrieved July 19, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Vahl, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vahl, Henry Adolf Emil Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German folk actor
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Stralsund
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1977
Place of death Hamburg