Living Moments - N°4 Edition 2017

www.private-residences.net Mario Adorf , geboren am 8.9.1930 in Zürich, aufgewachsen in Mayen/Eifel, lebt heute in Paris und München. Seit über 60 Jahren trat er in ungezählten Bühnenrollen und deutschen sowie internationalen Filmproduktionen auf. Darüber hinaus ist er Entertainer und Sänger. Mario Adorf was born on 8.9.1930 in Zurich and grew up in Mayen/Eifel. Now he lives in Paris and Munich. For more than 60 years he performed in numerous stage roles and in German, as well as international film productions. He is also an entertainer and a singer. ISBN: 978-3-462-04827-8 Erschienen am: 17.08.2015 176 Seiten, gebunden Kiepenheuer&Witsch ISBN: 978-3-462-04827-8 Published on: 17.08.2015 176 pages, Hardcover Kiepenheuer&Witsch Deutschland/ Germany Euro 17,99 Österreich/ Austria Euro 18,50 If one looks at your childhood, all this is anything but a matter-of-course. Your mother had to put you in an orphanage due to hardship. Today’s social workers would have given you a bad prognosis. There were things in my life that could have put a strain on me. But it didn’t get that far because I was lucky and I had self-confidence – as I said. The lat- ter I was given by my mother. A strong woman who didn’t allow her son to feel that he was low born:“You are somebo- dy! You don’t have to blame yourself!” she always used to say. That I was an il- legitimate child has in fact never played a role. I will be forever grateful to my mother for that. …In other ways this life has dealt very well with me: no severe illnesses, no losses in my nearest and de- arest. (Knocks on wood) Still, your life had not been easy in the early years. There were two basic experiences for me then: fear and starving. The fear in the bomb cellar and the starving that dominated many years after the war. When I started my first attempts in the theatre in Zurich I stole like a magpie to get something in my stomach. I was born there, in Zurich, but three months after she gave birth to me my mother was expelled from the country by the Swiss Aliens’ Police. So I returned 21 years later and again I didn’t have a bite to eat.When I said that I take life easy you must not mistake this in an airy way. I am not a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow; I know what life may demand from us. Has your biography sensitised you to the suffering of others? Absolutely. Fear, starving, aliens; I’m fa- miliar with all that. When I continued my career in Italy and in the USA, I, as a German, was often treated with hos- tility. I was suspected of being a Nazi and faced rejection and hatred. They added castor oil to my mineral water and scratched my car. The unions pro- tested against my being cast in roles which allegedly should have belonged to true Italians or Mexicans. Absurd. I know how you feel when you are not welcome in a country. But the destiny of today’s refugees is certainly incompar- ably worse than what had happened to me. Burning asylums, attacks on asylum seekers; I’m shocked by that.The refugee and asylum seeker drama is perhaps the biggest challenge since the end of the war. Then I thought it to be impossible that there will ever be Nazis again after all the murders in the concentration camps. Unfortunately I was wrong. What do you think about your colleague, Til Schweiger’s campaign to establish a state-of-the art centre for refugees? I think it is great that a celebrity wants to help the refugees. Til Schweiger, our most successful actor, director and pro- ducer, has the unfortunate talent to make himself unpopular with his thin- skinned, grouchy performances. Instead of creating a wave of sympathy which his engagement would have deserved, his polemic temper only leads to new polarisations. He thus attracts the at- tention of those whom he actually wants to muzzle. Back to art. In the cinema youmanaged to catch up with the new German film and shot with Schlöndorff and Fassbin- der … … but I played and watched the theatre less and less. In Munich I had then – in the years after Kortner – enjoyed the era of Dieter Dorn. At the end of the 1990s I, as a viewer, also slowly said farewell to the stage. Though it once used to be my life I only go to the theatre rarely. Does that make you sad? I become wistful. My little book also celebrates a good-bye. It writes an epi- taph to the big traditions of the Ger- man post-war theatre – along with the many men and women who characte- rised it. Sometimes posterity can bind garlands about the actor's head. The conversation was conducted by Roland Müller; Photography: Nik Konietzny. 11 7TaTYR 8ZXPY_^