Rolf Eden

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Rolf Eden, 2010

Rolf Shimon Eden (* 6. February 1930 in Berlin as Rolf Sigmund Sostheim ) is a German businessman and former nightclub owner . For years he has often been referred to as the (last) German or Berlin playboy and bon vivant and appears in public on talk shows and on other occasions, usually in a white suit.

Life

Early years in Israel

Eden was born as the elder of two sons to a Jewish family in the Tempelhof district of Berlin . After the National Socialists " seized power " , the family fled to Palestine in 1933 . Eden's father, who used to be an entrepreneur, worked as a taxi driver after he went bankrupt in 1936 . Eden's parents later ran a café in Haifa , and her grandparents ran a hotel. Rolf Eden left school at 14 and earned his living as a musician. In the first Arab-Israeli war he fought in the Palmach unit together with Yoram Kaniuk under Yitzchak Rabin . Eden's first of seven children by seven women, Irit (* 1949), dates from this time. He was also temporarily married to the mother of his first daughter, which Eden claims to have later kept from the press.

Paris

At the beginning of the 1950s, Eden lived in Paris and worked there as a musician, waiter, chauffeur, car dealer and he took on first extras in film productions, later also supporting roles. At the same time he waited in vain for a visa for the USA . When he read in the newspaper in 1956 that every Berliner living abroad who returned to West Berlin would receive 6,000  marks , he traveled to Berlin.

Berlin

Entrance to the Big Eden disco
Rolf Eden, 2011

At the beginning of his time in Berlin was waiting Eden on the promised money and worked briefly as a vacuum cleaner salesman and as a night porter and barman in a US - barracks . With the welcome money finally paid out, Eden first opened the Eden Saloon in 1957 on Nestorstrasse at the corner of Kurfürstendamm , which a few years later moved to the nearby Damaschkestrasse and (after the opening of the New Eden ) was also called Old Eden . It was followed by the New Eden , the Eden Playboy Club , the Cabaret Keyhole and, in 1967, the Big Eden . Then he opened the Blue Tattoo . The Eden Theater , founded in 1969, was later taken over by Peter Stein . Eden shaped the nightclub scene in Berlin in the 1950s and 1960s and remained successful in the 1970s and 1980s. After the political turnaround , Eden gradually sold all of its establishments, his last discotheque , the Big Eden , he sold in 2002. According to his statements, all the later owners went bankrupt with the shops they took over .

Eden made the bare skin of women an important part of his business, his female employees walking bare chests through his establishments. He is also considered the inventor of the live music maker profession, which is famous as a DJ .

Eden has been investing its money in real estate since 1977. According to his own statements, he owned 26 apartment buildings with several hundred apartments in Berlin in 2012.

Eden has also worked as an actor again and again and has so far appeared in around 30 films.

Private

Eden lived openly promiscuously for decades and had numerous acquaintances, which were and are often accompanied by press reports. The (then) well-known personalities at his side included, for example, Kai Fischer , Evelyn Künneke , Maria Karrer (model of Emilio Schuberth ), Barbara Valentin , Barbara Capell and Sieglinde Walter (photo model in the early 1960s), with whom he also had another son Has. He was in a relationship with Ursula Buchfellner for seven years from the early 1980s.

In 2012, his autobiography was always only lucky: How I became Germany's most famous playboy in Lübbe-Verlag . Co-author was the director Peter Dörfler , who released a documentary about Eden's life in 2011 with The Big Eden .

Filmography (selection)

Works

literature

Movies

Music videos

Web links

Commons : Rolf Eden  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rolf Eden is the greatest. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 22, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b Uwe Killing: The two lives of Rolf Eden. The truth about the last German playboy. In: Focus Online . December 21, 2011, accessed April 4, 2012 .
  3. ↑ Oliver Das Gupta: "I have certainly killed people". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 9, 2012, accessed August 25, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Nicholas Kulish: A German Playboy, With a Well-Kept, Earnest Past. In: The New York Times . March 30, 2012, accessed April 4, 2012 .
  5. ↑ Stefan Kuzmany: Playboy portrait "The Big Eden". A potato salad with a blonde, please. In: Der Spiegel . February 15, 2011, accessed April 4, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Martin Zips: Rolf Eden turns 90. Accessed on May 12, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Dragan Wende - West Berlin in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Eden, Rolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eden, Rolf Shimon (full name); Sostheim, Rolf Sigmund (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman and former night club owner
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin