Maxi Bohm

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Maxi Böhm on a Lohner L98 motor scooter (1950s)

Max Erich Octavian "Maxi" Böhm (born August 23, 1916 in Vienna ; † December 26, 1982 there ) was an Austrian actor and cabaret artist . With his collection of around 80,000 jokes, he was Austria's “joke president”.

Childhood and youth

Maxi Böhm was born in Vienna in 1916 as the son of a spa doctor and a nurse and went to school in Teplitz-Schönau ( Teplice , now the Czech Republic ). He grew up in his grandmother's "Französischer Hof" spa facility. Since his father was a music and theater critic as a sideline, Max saw great actors and singers like Ernst Deutsch , Albert Bassermann and Richard Tauber as a child in the Teplitz City Theater . According to his own statements, he was particularly impressed by the Viennese comedians such as Gisela Wer District , Hans Moser , Paul Morgan , Karl Farkas and Fritz Grünbaum or Armin Berg . The child's early enthusiasm for comedy and acting was not appreciated by the father, who wanted the son to succeed him as a doctor.

Because of bad grades, Böhm switched from high school to business academy. On October 1, 1933, he appeared on stage for the first time in the Schwank "So'n Greyhound" under the pseudonym Heinz Lindner in the role of an aged, padded court councilor . In the same year his father died.

At the age of 17 he went to Berlin to become an actor, took acting lessons, but failed his acting test. He worked as an extra at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus Berlin .

Beginnings as an actor

In 1935 he went to Prague , where he passed the drama exam and immediately got a contract for the Eger City Theater for the 1935/1936 season. Here, as in 1936/1937 and 1937/1938 at the Reichenberg City Theater , he played mainly in comedies and operettas. In the summer of 1936 he was the disciple Johannes in a Passion Play touring production. In Reichenberg, director Paul Barnay recognized Böhm's comedic talent and encouraged him to do so. That season he played the Dr. Jura in Hermann Bahr's The Concert and the title role in Charley's Aunt . Summer engagements took him to the spa theaters of Marienbad and Karlsbad , where he played with Gisela Wer District and Paul Morgan, who had been adored since childhood, and learned from them. In the summer of 1938 he played in the Kurtheater Franzensbad with his later Viennese colleagues Guido Wieland and Ernst Waldbrunn . In 1938/1939 he played in his home town of Teplitz-Schönau, in 1939/1940 as “jugdl. Comedian, shy lover on roles according to individuality ”at the theater in Reichenberg.

From 1940 to 1944 he was engaged at the Bremen theater, where Bernhard Wicki and Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff were among his colleagues. Here he played, among other things, the Truffaldino in Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters . He was also responsible for looking after the troops, and was de facto exempt from military service.

At a festival performance in the Bremen Opera House on April 20, 1944 for Kraft durch Freude , which he moderated together with Kulenkampff, he fell over a spit with a couplet critical of the Wehrmacht with the refrain "Do with me what you want, I don't care ..." on, was then released from the theater and transferred to Budapest , where he was assigned to a telegraph construction company. He experienced the end of the war in Upper Austria.

Quiz master and cabaret artist

“Das Simpl” in Vienna's Wollzeile was Maxi Böhm's place of work for 17 years.

In Linz he started as a master of the meeting in the Metropol-Bar in 1945 . Here he also met the actor Peter Hey . Together they opened the cabaret "Eulenspiegel" in October 1945, where they brought out 15 revues by November 1947.

Böhm as conférencier for the transmitter Rot-Weiß-Rot (1950)

In 1947 he was hired by the American broadcaster Rot-Weiß-Rot as "Radio Uncle Max" as a quiz master . According to his biographer Georg Markus , Böhm was the first quiz master in Europe. Until 1949, under the title Try your luck , the program was broadcast live from different locations, soon not only in Upper Austria, but throughout Austria, but also in Bavaria and Switzerland. In the beginning, the profits were natural produce, coal, washing powder, etc. Böhm became a crowd favorite and during this time he became a “Maxi”. A survey by Radio-Woche magazine in 1950 for Austria's most popular man saw Maxi Böhm in first place with 49 percent, followed by Foreign Minister Karl Gruber and Federal President Karl Renner . During this time Böhm moved to Vienna and married Huberta Schauberger, daughter of Viktor Schauberger . Son Max was born in 1949, Michael in 1951 and Christine in 1954 , who also worked as an actress.

In 1949, trying your luck was replaced by Freu dich not too early , which Böhm moderated together with Peter Hey. The best known was the show The Great Chance , which he moderated from 1951 to 1955 and in which he was musically accompanied by Norbert Pawlicki . From 1950 to spring 1951 he played at the “Laughing Cabaret” in the Melodies Bar ( Annagasse 3, St. Annahof (Vienna) ) alongside Hugo Wiener and Cissy Kraner .

In the summer months of July and August Maxi Böhm organized bathing tours through the tourist areas, for which he also hired well-known artists such as Hugo Wiener , Cissy Kraner , Fritz Imhoff and Hermann Leopoldi . Days without play were unknown to him. Record-breaking were his performances on New Year's Eve, where he made up to 16 appearances in one night in the 1950s and 1960s.

Boehm bought in Bad Ischl the Villa Felicitas of Katharina Schratt that of the heir Fritz laborers-Bede was sold, and led them for 15 years as a breakfast "Pension of good humor." After the sale of the Ischl villa, he took over a guest house on Semmering.

In the 1948/1949 season he played at the Volkstheater in Vienna . He also played in the Casanova Boulevard Theater.

In 1957 he was brought to the Simpl by Karl Farkas , where he had made a brief guest appearance in 1950. He developed into one of the most important pillars of the Simpl ensemble and, after Ernst Waldbrunn moved to Josefstadt, he also took on the role of the stupid in the double conferences with Farkas. For 17 years the Simpl Böhm was the main place of activity. On television he was best known for his parodies in Farkas' 97 “balance sheets”: as Ivan Rebroff , Gilbert Bécaud , Leonard Bernstein or Don Jaime . Bernstein had the parody played for him on a visit to Vienna and “laughed tears”.

In 1971, after Farkas' death, he took over the artistic direction of Simpl together with Peter Hey and Hugo Wiener, until it was sold to Martin Flossmann in 1974 . In a process, Böhm had to fight for clearance from the owner Baruch Picker, as he viewed the Simpl employees as artists, not as actors. Picker even had to ask the judge questions like the following: "If there were all artists and no actors, why didn't the plaintiff have the title of animal trainer?"

Actors again

From 1973 to 1974 Maxi Böhm played in 26 episodes Hallo - Hotel Sacher… Portier! together with Fritz Eckhardt .

In his private life, Max Böhm, who temporarily suffered from depression and had been living apart from his wife for some time, suffered several severe blows of fate: his younger brother Wolfgang died after a long illness, on August 5, 1979 his daughter Christine died in a hiking accident, on August 7 , 1979 . May 1980 his son Max committed suicide with a firearm.

Max Böhm, as he now called himself again, had been a member of the theater in der Josefstadt's ensemble since 1976 and was on stage practically every day for the next six years. Director Franz Stoss had won it over against the ensemble's initial reservations. He made his debut on September 29, 1976 in the Schwank of Arnold und Bach Der chaste bon vivant , where he shone with his friend Alfred Böhm . He also succeeded Ernst Waldbrunn at the Kammerspiele , who died on December 22, 1977. Böhm played a total of 15 pieces, including Hurray, a boy , Pension Schöller and Hofrat Geiger . In the piece bedroom guest of Alan Ayckbourn he played under the direction of Heinz Marecek with Vilma Degischer first time in a serious piece. With this piece at the latest, he also gained recognition from the rest of the ensemble, which awarded him the Ring of Honor of the Theater in der Josefstadt.

Grave of Max Boehm

From September 1, 1982, Böhm played together with Elfriede Ott in the Kammerspiele in the comedic two-person revue Schau'n Sie sich das , an evening of entertainment in memory of Karl Farkas. In the play he had to master 22 roles. From November he also had rehearsals for the play The Robbery of the Sabine Women by Franz and Paul von Schönthan , where he played the leading role of the smear comedian Emanuel Striese. Böhm felt that he was barely able to cope with the strain, even wanted to give up the role and took heavy antidepressants . The play premiered on December 22nd and was a great success. Another performance followed on December 25th. On December 26th, he died of a heart attack around noon .

Max Böhm was buried on January 5, 1983 in an honorary grave of the City of Vienna in the Vienna Central Cemetery (Group 33G, No. 68). His estate , containing an extensive collection of jokes that Böhm began to create as a child, is in the literary archive of the Austrian National Library .

Böhm's great-granddaughter Luna Schaller (* 2001), granddaughter of his son Max, made her debut in 2012 in the television film Grandma Against Will .

Awards and honors

Dedication plaque at the Max-Böhm-Hof in Vienna 8th, designed by Johann Jascha
  • Gold Medal of Merit of the State of Vienna (1957)
  • Gold Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital Vienna (1982)
  • Ring of honor of the theater in the Josefstadt
  • On December 16, 1983, the Max Böhm bust of Angelika Eder was unveiled in the foyer of the Wiener Kammerspiele.
  • On September 10, 1987, the Max-Böhm-Hof urban residential complex in Vienna 8, Tigergasse 22, was named after him (Böhm himself lived in this district for a long time, namely at Strozzigasse 37 and Josefstädter Straße 9).
  • In 2009, Max-Böhm-Gasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after him.
  • In October 2014 Amalthea Signum Verlag published the comic book Der Blöde und der Gscheite, drawn by Reinhard Trinkler - The best double conferences based on texts by Hugo Wiener , in which Maxi Böhm appears as a comic figure.

Works

  • Maxi Böhm calls Austria . Vox-Austriae, St. Johann 1948.
  • The national joke distributor Maxi Böhm chats and keeps silent . Lyra, Vienna 1951 (Vienna Humor Library, No. 17).
  • Joke President Maxi Böhm . Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1972. ISBN 3-21800-378-4 .
  • Böhm's Lachendes Lexikon. The best jokes from A to Z from the largest collection in Europe . Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-218-00382-2 .
  • With us in Reichenberg. Unfinished memoirs, narrated by Georg Markus . Amalthea, Vienna and Munich 1983, ISBN 3-85002-177-7 .
  • In reality everything is very different ... Poetic diary . Sensen, Vienna 1983. ISBN 3-900130-85-X .
  • Give me your thousand question mark . Sensen, Vienna 1988

Filmography

literature

Web links

Commons : Maxi Böhm  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maxi Böhm: With us in Reichenberg , p. 54.
  2. ↑ Facsimile of the service contract in: Maxi Böhm: Bei uns in Reichenberg , p. 143.
  3. ↑ Maxi Böhm: With us in Reichenberg , p. 198f.
  4. ↑ Simon Usaty: "I think I'm not quite normal" . Edition Steinbauer, 2009, ISBN 978-3-902-49437-5 , limited preview in Google Book Search
  5. ↑ Maxi Böhm: With us in Reichenberg , p. 207.
  6. ↑ Maxi Böhm: With us in Reichenberg , p. 257.
  7. ↑ Maxi Böhm: With us in Reichenberg , p. 244.
  8. ↑ Christine Böhm in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  9. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Grandma against will. Heilbronner Voice of February 24, 2012. ) @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.stimme.de
  10. ↑ AS: “Don't get angry” is discontinued. Too much "in the box" . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna May 14, 1968, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
personal data
SURNAME Bohm, Maxi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Böhm, Max (real name); Böhm, Max Erich Octavian (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian actor and cabaret artist
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1982
Place of death Vienna , Austria