Horst Buchholz

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Horst Buchholz
Horst Buchholz (1950s)
Berlin memorial plaque on Sodtkestrasse 11 in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg

Horst Werner Buchholz (born December 4, 1933 in Berlin ; † March 3, 2003 there ) was a German actor and voice actor .

Life

Horst Werner Buchholz was born as the son of Maria Hasenkamp in the Berlin district of Neukölln . He never got to know his biological father, who is said to have been the Berlin teacher student Werner Albert Rhode. Shortly after his birth, his mother gave it to foster parents Fritz and Anna Nowak in Neukölln. He received the name Buchholz in 1938 when his mother married the shoemaker Hugo Buchholz and took her son back to her home. The family then lived in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg working-class district . His half-sister Heidi was born in 1941. She gave him the nickname "Hotte", which he kept until his death. Buchholz learned early on to be self-sufficient and independent. During the Second World War in 1943 he was sent to a children's country deportation camp in Silesia , from where he made his way back to Berlin with a friend in 1946.

Buchholz earned his first money with various jobs in Berlin. He also went back to school at the Schinkel Realschule, which had to be interrupted during the war. He played his first stage role in a school play of Cabal and Love . This was followed by an engagement as a children's statistician in the production of the Dreimäderlhaus at the Metropol-Theater , where Buchholz played his first speaking role in Kästner's play Emil and the Detectives on April 14, 1947 . At the Hebbel Theater on August 29, 1948, the first leading role in the play The Raft of Medusa by Georg Kaiser followed . Since then, Buchholz has worked in West Berlin as a voice actor for feature films and radio plays for the broadcaster RIAS . In 1950 he dropped out of school without a degree in order to devote himself entirely to acting. In 1951, the cross-border commuter moved to live with his foster parents in West Berlin, where he took acting lessons from Marlise Ludwig . Until 1955, Buchholz could be seen on numerous stages, such as the Schlosspark Theater , the Schiller Theater, the Renaissance Theater, the Vaganten Stage and the experimental stage of the British Center .

Buchholz made his screen debut in 1952 as an extra (“Young man at the radio tower”) in The Trace Leads to Berlin , a film with Irina Garden . For his fourth film, Himmel ohne Sterne by Helmut Käutner , he was awarded the Silver Film Ribbon as the best young actor in 1956 . In the same year, Horst Buchholz made his breakthrough with the lead role in Die Halbstarken alongside Karin Baal . His next film, Endstation Liebe , was also a success and cemented his reputation as the "German James Dean ". The figure of the stubborn rebel seemed to be tailor-made for him and made him a youth idol in East and West Germany . In 1957 he played the male lead alongside Romy Schneider in the film Monpti .

In 1958, Buchholz married the French actress Myriam Bru following the shooting of the film Resurrection , in which both had starred. He received a Bambi for his portrayal of the title role in the Thomas Mann film adaptation Confessions of the impostor Felix Krull , which also made him internationally known. After he was able to celebrate another success with Nasser Asphalt , he made his first international film with Tiger Bay in London in 1959 and received high praise from critics for his performance. That same year he had his Broadway debut in the play Cherie by Anita Loos .

In 1959 he made his last German film, Das Totenschiff nach B. Traven . From then on, Buchholz, who was fluent in six languages, worked mainly in the USA , France , Italy and Great Britain . In 1960 and 1961 he worked in two Hollywood films. He starred in the globally successful western The Magnificent Seven , directed by John Sturges , alongside Yul Brynner , Steve McQueen , Charles Bronson and James Coburn . He was also in One, Two, Three , a Billy Wilder comedy about the Cold War . This film achieved cult status after the fall of the Berlin Wall .

In 1973, Buchholz returned for comedy film ... but Johnny! back to Germany. In the following years he mainly worked for television. In 1981 he received his own television program called Astro Show , which he hosted together with astrologer Elizabeth Teissier . After five episodes, however, the series was taken over by Hans Peter Heinzl .

Until his death, Buchholz played theater again in Berlin, for example the role of the conférencier in the musical Cabaret at the Theater des Westens in 1979 . After that he was in 1984 in the courtroom drama Twelve Angry Men at the Renaissance Theater and in 1986 The business of Baron Laborde of Hermann Broch at Schiller Theater (Berlin) to see. He had his last major film role in 1997 as a German concentration camp - doctor in Roberto Benigni's Oscar -prämiertem film Life is Beautiful .

Private

In 2000, in an interview with Bunten , he officially spoke about his bisexuality for the first time , which he has always lived out - albeit in secret. Buchholz died unexpectedly in 2003 of pneumonia that he contracted after surgery on a femoral neck fracture. The funeral service in his honor in the Berlin Memorial Church was broadcast live on television by n-tv .

He was buried in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend . By decision of the Berlin Senate , the last resting place of Horst Buchholz (grave location: field I-Wald-2) has been dedicated as an honorary grave of the State of Berlin since 2010 . The dedication is provisionally valid for 20 years, but can then be extended.

His marriage to actress Myriam Bru , who was last separated from him , has two children, Christopher (* 1962) and Beatrice, who now lives as a Sikh in California under the name Simran Kaur Khalsa .

Grave of Horst Buchholz in the Waldfriedhof Heerstraße in Berlin

Together with their mother, the Buchholz children realized his wish for a biography in autumn 2003 , for which he himself had no longer found the time. Under the title Horst Buchholz - His Life in Pictures , they brought out an illustrated book with biographical notes that honored his life's work. His son Christopher, who also works as an actor and director, created the documentary Horst Buchholz… mein Papa in autumn 2005, a cinematic homage which , according to him, also worked through the relationship with his father.

On December 4, 2014 , a Berlin memorial plaque was unveiled at his former residence, Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg , Sodtkestrasse 11 .

Awards

Buchholz was on the cover of BRAVO a total of 19 times and there were also 10 posters of him.

Films (selection)

Radio plays (selection)

literature

TV documentary

  • Horst Buchholz ... my papa. Germany 2005 (90 minutes), directors: Christopher Buchholz and Sandra Hacker, production: Say Cheese Productions, SWR , RBB , Arte , press issue (PDF; 139 kB), trailer ( MOV ; 5.2 MB), flyer (PDF).

Web links

Commons : Horst Buchholz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm von Humboldt Community School . Information from the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing on the Schinkel School at Erich-Weinert-Straße 70, requested on August 19, 2018
  2. ↑ a b Axel Schock, Karen-Susan Fessel: OUT! - 800 famous lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Querverlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89656-111-1
  3. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . Pp. 484-485.
  4. ↑ Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of November 2018) . (PDF, 413 kB) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, p. 12. Accessed on November 8, 2019. Recognition and further preservation of graves as honorary graves of the State of Berlin (PDF, 73 kB). Berlin House of Representatives, printed matter 16/3696 of November 30, 2010, pp. 1–3. Retrieved November 8, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Buchholz, Horst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Buchholz, Horst Werner (full name); Bookholt, Henry (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 2003
Place of death Berlin