Hannelore Elsner: When she laughs, the sun rises
There was that adorable smile crowned by the wrinkles around her eyes. It could ignite or break hearts and was so absorbing it hurt quickly. “Nobody, really nobody in the whole wide world could resist this smile”, as director Doris Dörrie (67) described it.
It is remembered so vividly, as if the actress Hannelore Elsner, who died in 2019 and would have celebrated her 80th birthday on July 26, was still with us. This smile acts like a force field and was her best protection against chaos and vulnerability, which Hanni, as her friends called her, often had to live with.
The playwright Moritz Rinke (54) experienced such a moment in 2000. He had arranged a stage performance with 2,000 children, the Scorpions, the Buena Vista Social Club and the American Chancellor, whom Hannelore Elsner was supposed to moderate, for the world exhibition in Hanover, was catastrophic went in his pants. Not least because the stage manager was “drunk”, as Rinke described it in the “Tagesspiegel”, and the “old gentlemen from the Buena Vista Social Club from Cuba cried after falling over the Scorpions’ musical instruments”.
The most insane scene came when Rinke wrote a much too long introduction for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (78), but he had received the wrong sign from the stage manager and appeared much too early. Elsner continued to moderate him, but the Chancellor said: “But Ms. Elsner, I’ve been here for a long time! She replied: “I don’t care at all!”
“And there was that fabulous smile again”
Then the Scorpions “demolished” the stage and co-moderator Max Raabe (59) began to sing his lyrics. “Hannelore Elsner was already sitting in the dressing room in front of the mirror when I ran to her in a panic with some text changes. ‘I’m ruining myself,’ she said quietly. And there was that fabulous smile again, which she for a moment over a disturbed, wonderful beautiful face.”
Of course, she didn’t ruin herself, on the contrary: From the year 2000 onwards, her career really picked up speed again. Hannelore Elsner became one of the best actresses in films with a cult character alongside her colleagues Senta Berger (81) and Iris Berben (71). In “The Untouchables” (2000) by Oskar Roehler (63), she played his mother, the writer Gisela Elsner, who is called Hanna Flanders in the film.
In “My Last Film” (2002) by Oliver Hirschbiegel (64), she shines in a 90-minute monologue, in the comedy “Alles auf Zucker” (2004) by Dani Levy (64) as the Jewish wife of a notorious gambler, in ” The great Rudolph” (2018), she demonstrated her brilliant versatility as the mother of the Munich fashion designer Rudolph Moshammer. Another highlight of her life’s work was “Kirschblüten – Hanami” (2008), the story of the terminally ill Rudi (Elmar Wepper, 78), his wife Trudi dies unexpectedly before him.
A tribute to her grandmother
Director Doris Dörries told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, as she negotiated with Elsner. “She can’t really make friends with Trudi, when I ask her to do the role Bavarian, she says, I can’t, that’s absolutely not possible. – But Trudi comes from Bavaria, it has to be. – Her is silent for a long time, then she smiles her famous lightning smile… and says: ‘Okay, then I’ll play my grandma.'”
She was born in Burghausen in the Bavarian province. As a child she only spoke Bavarian, and it was so difficult to break the habit of the dialect. She then never took on a Bavarian role again. But then came Trudi, which she wanted to play as a tribute to her grandmother. “My grandmother was a farmer’s daughter from Lower Bavaria with a long braid,” she said in an interview the “Emma” editor Alice Schwarzer (79). You loved your grandma very much. “Everything was safe and beautiful with her.”
She has never forgotten the smell of early apples. “Or when there was a thunderstorm. And when they fell like that. And there was a flower garden and a vegetable garden and a salad garden. And the meadows. In the little house there was an outhouse and goats, chickens and geese. I drank lukewarm goat’s milk. That childhood had something shining, something wild, something very archaic for me.”
Heavy blows of fate
The idyllic image of childhood is also determined by tragic moments. Then there is the death of Manfred, who was three years his senior, in early 1945. He was on his way from Burghausen to Neuötting to see his grandmother when low-flying aircraft attacked the train. Six projectiles were found in Manfred’s small body, which she kept in a linen bag. Later said Hannelore Elsner the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”: “My memories have faded, but the feelings are there. An unbelievable feeling of abandonment in my heart. It was an unspeakable pain in the family.”
Then the father got sick, tuberculosis. She is eight when he dies. “I still remember exactly how I sat on his deathbed in my first communion dress, all night. This endless longing for me for the great prince is logical. My brother was my prince. And then my father was my prince. And they just get out…” she described her feelings in an interview with Alice Schwarzer.
When she moved to Munich with her mother and after dropping out of high school, she was discovered by a young Turkish director on the street: “He was in love with me, but he was too old for me, he was 24. We rehearsed it for weeks a film never came out of it.” After all, the film company sent her to an acting school, the first offers came, she acted in theaters and had appearances in films such as “Freddy under alien stars” (1959), “Allotria in Zell am See” (1963 ) or “The lout from the first bench” (1967).
your loves
She was married to the actor Gerd Vespermann from 1964 to 1966, and around 1970 she is said to have had another marriage with her colleague Michael Miller. She also had a relationship with the Austrian filmmaker Alf Breastellin, which ended in 1981 with his accidental death in a Munich taxi. In between, she had a short relationship with the recently deceased director Dieter Wedel (1939-2022), from whom she had her son Dominik in 1981. A longer relationship with the producer Bernd Eichinger (1949-2011), a marriage with the theater dramaturge Uwe B. Carstensen (1973-2000) and a love for the literature professor Günter Blamberger followed.
“Bernd Eichinger was the best,” she said to Alice Schwarzer. “He didn’t restrict me at all. He actually loves it when you speak his mind. He was in love with me and respected me. He didn’t stuff me with all that love kitsch either. And when I said: No, today not – then I could say that. Without fear of loss.”
As her son Dominik reported after her death, Hannelore Elsner had been suffering from breast cancer since the mid-1990s. She even addressed the disease as an actress in ‘End of the Season’ (2001) when she played a mother with cancer – and no one on the set knew how the leading lady was doing. In her last film “Long Live the Queen” she also played a dying cancer patient. They even had to put themselves in a coffin. Hannelore Elsner died while the film was still being shot.
Director Dieter Wedel, who has been accused of rape several times, said of his son Dominik’s mother: “When she laughed, the room lit up. And all the men fell at her feet.” She never returned that compliment. “No, Wedel is not Dominik’s father, he is his father.”
A notice: This report is part of an automated service by the agency spot on news, which works according to strict journalistic rules. It WILL NOT be edited or checked by the AZ online editors. Please send questions and comments to [email protected]
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