Playboy (person)

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Playboy ( English "young bon vivant") is the name that is no longer used so often for a rich man (often a rich heir ) of high society , who spends his money primarily on leisure activities, stays in night clubs and many changing women or men Man has acquaintances - "actually a wonderful idiot" ( Gunter Sachs ), whose eccentric amusements are mainly interested in the tabloid press .

Especially in the late 1950s and 1960s he cultivated the Dolce Vita (sweet life) or Dolce far niente (sweet idleness) in its purest form on the beaches of the Riviera . He flirted with not having to work and demonstrated it demonstratively.

As a bon vivant , he is - next to the heartbreaker of the 1920s - one of the classic role types in the art of acting ( role subject ). As Beau or Adonis he is the handsome, as Roué the libertine, as Filou the useless of society. French literature knew the Bel-Ami ( beautiful friend ). An Italian variant is the papagallo ; it ensnares - especially on beaches - foreign tourists.

The term first came to the German-speaking world in the mid-1960s through reports in gossip magazines like Quick about celebrities like Gunter Sachs . The Duden gives the bon vivant and salon lion as synonyms .

history

The term Playboy first appears in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1828 . The definition there reads: "a person, especially a wealthy one, who is out to enjoy" ; "A selfish pleasure seeker" .

Favored by the then rapidly increasing prosperity in England, the dandies appeared there between 1750 and 1800 . They were so rich that they didn't have to work, they loathed everything bright, loud, and perfumed. The dandy was an occasional snob . He cultivated his clothes, his demeanor as well as wit and bon mot . The original, but always suitable elegant clothing for sport (pastime), combined with the perfectly formed manners of a gentleman , was raised to the main purpose of life.

Famous dandies were Beau Brummell , Beau Nash , Charles Baudelaire , Lord Byron , Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau , Benjamin Disraeli , and later also representatives of aestheticism such as Ernst Jünger , Oscar Wilde , James McNeill Whistler , Max Beerbohm and Nicolaus Sombart . One of the most famous dandies of the 20th century was the Prince of Wales (briefly King Edward VIII ), later Duke of Windsor.

Playboys experienced a heyday in the middle of the 20th century when people began to enjoy the good things in life again after the privations of World War II. Well-known playboys were Arndt von Bohlen and Halbach , the billionaire Prince Alex Agafonov , Alfonso Prince zu Hohenlohe , Gunter Sachs (who called himself " Homo ludens " (a person playing) and thought women were the most beautiful thing in the world) and the daring Australian Freddie McEvoy , who together with Hollywood star Errol Flynn made the high society meeting place Acapulco unsafe. When asked by Newsweek magazine if he ever worked, Playboy Porfirio Rubirosa , a diplomat from the Dominican Republic , replied :

"Job? I have no time for work. ” His philosophy on life: “ Most men want nothing more than to earn a fortune, I just want to spend my fortune. ” He died on July 5, 1965 in a car accident in his Ferrari . Newspapers called him the "last real playboy" .

Gunter Sachs made headlines when he married the French film actress and bombshell Brigitte Bardot in Las Vegas (USA) on July 14, 1966 - after heavy advertising in Saint-Tropez . Bardot's later comment on the short marriage:

“I hadn't married a man alone, but a clan of playboys who were frolicking around who were forged closer together by complicity than marriage could ever do. In their lives women certainly did not function as 'women' in the most positive sense. They looked for beautiful, young and preferably stupid companions. Bad luck for Gunter! Since I did not have the latter qualification, I became increasingly annoying to him. He was playing around and I stood in his way! "

In 1969 the marriage was divorced; the two stayed in close contact until Sachs' death in 2011.

To have materially taken care of alone was not enough to be considered a playboy. This also included lively amusements of the kind described by Alfonso Prince zu Hohenlohe :

“The weekend sailing to Long Island or Newport ; Polo at the Vanderbilts in Connecticut , a few days with other bachelors in Havana , Cuba . ” A“ real ”Playboy didn't have to be pretty, but it had to be sexually attractive, always looking for a new affair and lavish with it handle his mostly inherited money. Most of all, he should be in the public spotlight. Rolf Eden , former West Berlin disco and night club king and, according to self-assessment, the last German playboy, says:

“I'm just really potent when I have different young women, and that is always interesting for me, the sweet little stories they tell me and what worries them so much, what little worries they have. And the great fun we always have: We travel together, we go out very often. I also really try to please the ladies, I don't just mean sexually, but also small pieces of jewelry . I think women have to be pampered from top to bottom every day and really make them very happy . "

In the course of the emancipation of women , the playboy gradually disappeared from the parquet of the boulevard and is now almost cultural history . Occasionally the term is still used for a promiscuous man.

Hugh Hefner , who founded the erotic magazine of the same name in 1953 , is often referred to as Playboy.

Gunter Sachs, once the epitome of Playboy, was civil, married in 1969 the Swede Mirja Larsson, with which he more than forty years , scandal-free was married, and made a name for himself as a serious photographer . Sometimes he would tell wistfully about his previous life as a playboy on talk shows .

Playboys in literature and film

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was remembered by posterity through his memoirs (“ Histoire de ma vie ”) (published from 1822).

The novel Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant (1885) describes the parvenu rise of Sergeant George Duroy, surrounded by lovers, money and the decor of the fin de siècle .

In films, actors such as Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo impersonated roles of playboys or bon vivants.

In many films of the 1950s, ' Jeunesse dorée ' (rich, easy-going and self-indulgent youth in the big cities) became the epitome of youth culture: the mostly moralizing films often addressed the futility of life in idleness. In 'Les tricheurs' ( Marcel Carné , 1958), the life of a young clique revolves around idleness, revealing sexuality and boredom crime until one of them dies in a sports car. Federico Fellini's Das süße Leben (1960) also criticizes this life - and made many viewers want to live like this.

The film Die Reifeprüfung (1967), which caused a sensation (for the first time the relationship between a married woman and a younger lover was depicted without prejudice), also described a Playboy variant: young rich man and older bound woman have an affair.

Social reception

David Hugendick wrote in an essay in 2011: "The pleasure-addicted gentleman was the alternative to a society that imposed rigid sexual morals on the chastity belt. The playboy chased through the holiday camps of the rich and beautiful in a convertible: you met him in Rimini, in St. Tropez or in Monaco, where he was in the best of circles, but was strangely out of the way because he didn't share their morals and values. He didn't have to look dazzling either. His attractiveness came from the contradiction between his upper-class demeanor and generous waste Characteristics were charm and the will to style. He was the modern legionnaire of the moment. "

Unlike the hippie , who preferred similar libertarian relationship patterns, the playboy was an apolitical figure. His way of life is not a rebellion against the prevailing zeitgeist, but is content with celebrating the glamorous and extravagant that others denied themselves. The beautiful life to the fullest with everything that was part of it back then. The well-cut suits, the scarves, the cigarettes, the drinks and the women. If there is something sad in all this joie de vivre, it is that Playboy never wants to become old. When the charm and the art of seduction suddenly stand in the way of light hair and wrinkles, it is time for him to take off. Eternal party and youth only exist with Oscar Wilde .

Today, when the glamorous is immediately associated with superficiality, the Playboy appears as an outdated model. When it comes to fast cars, the environment and lack of resources are thought of, while the obligatory cigarette is thought of damage to health. In a society characterized by renunciation, even James Bond [...] has had to go through a change in mentality. ... Whereas the true playboy derived his elegance from a certain nonchalance and sophistication, the only thing left for the successors is wealth and its waste. If Playboy was a social figure of the past century, her postmodern counterpart in the new millennium is at best the It girl , who confuses sophistication with jet set .

The behavior of playboys is criticized for various reasons: it is hedonistic or unethical. Quote: “if you look at it closely, repel it and scare you, because you perceive it as evil and wrong” ( Maria Valtorta ).

Web links

Wiktionary: Playboy  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

See also

literature

  • Joachim Kurz: The handsome man. Playboys, dandies, bon vivants. Knesebeck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-86873-107-1 (portrays 16 men from different times).

References

  1. ↑ Salon lion, the. In: duden.de .
  2. ^ Nicolaus Sombart: Culture: The ideal of the dandy. In: Focus magazine. 15/1995. (online at: focus.de ) .
  3. ↑ Photographer Gunter Sachs is dead. Auf: Zeit online. May 8, 2011.
  4. ^ Maria Valtorta: Die Hefte des 1944. Parvis-Verlag, Hauteville (Switzerland) 2009, ISBN 978-2-88022-810-1 , p. 13.