Asbjørn Svarstad, Manfred Krug | A piece of shit by God’s grace
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When I walked past kneipa Diener on Savignyplatz in Berlin one afternoon in the mid-90s, I succumbed to the temptation to dump into the sun steak and order a beer.
Next to it, sat five or six fellows, swinging their goblets. He, who was obviously the center of the group, eventually asked if I didn’t want to sit with them. I knew I had put the face before, but could not the man. But he found that Norwegians and Germans get along well and that we should probably have a nice evening together.
Everyone knew “Manne”
The fun at the table basically consisted of “Manne” telling stories, whereupon the others laughed until they were about to take them.
One whispered in my ear that we were together with Manfred Krug (1937-2016) himself.
Don’t you know him? Lead role in a crime series, truck driver in a popular series and lawyer in an even more satirical TV production.
Everyone knew Manne. Just not me.
Asbjørn Svarstad
Asbjørn Svarstad started writing in the local newspaper Dagningen, for some years was linked to VG. From 1987 Dagbladet’s stringer in Copenhagen. Since 1996 lived permanently in Berlin where he has worked for various Scandinavian media. Works mostly with historical feature articles, political commentary and is an authorized guide in Sachsenhausen.
Later I was to realize that it was about a former superstar of East German TV, who in 1978 was given permission to leave the GDR to settle in West Germany. There, too, he quickly managed to make a name for himself. Manne was actually one of the very few eastern actors who managed to make a breakthrough on “the other side”. And after the fall of the Wall, he also really became popular again on the east side.
Manne explained the world, and once in a while he patted him on the shoulder in a very friendly way and repeated his assurances that Norwegians and Germans – almost by nature – are the best friends in the whole world. (I’m always skeptical of such declarations of love, but for some reason it’s okay with the unbridled praise.)
The Pole
After a few hours in the sun, I noticed a young man standing a few meters away and looking in our direction. He was skinny as a line and wearing a dress that was bad in every way.
After a while he straightened up and approached our table with determination. He politely apologized for disturbing, but it was so that he had come even the honor from Poland to look for his great role model – the German superstar Mannfred Krug.
As a five-six-year-old, the boy had made a film with him in the lead role, and on the spot decided to become an actor. That is why he had learned German. What a beautiful day, he had to get on the train to Berlin and see if it wasn’t possible to catch a glimpse of the role model up close. He really wanted nothing more than to be about an autograph.
“Do I look like I’m at work?”, “Do you think it’s just coming over and disturbing people in your spare time?” “Doesn’t a hard-working artist have the right to sit in peace when he rarely finds time to go out with his friends?”
The term “Polish dog” was used more than once, and I felt how the innate firebrand crept up my spine.
When the now-crying Pole finished apologizing so much, he left us bowing and scratching.
“Well, Norwegian, you learned how to treat Polish dogs”, laughed Mannfred Krug.
There was a crash, and mine landed on the pavement and took a table with it, which also fell over.
Suddenly I felt that young Svarstad was standing there and roaring. “Damn package” was just the beginning, and afterwards I got a string of appropriate insults thrown at me – some of them so crude that I was both surprised and shocked.
Fassbinder
When the rapture was over and “Manne” – as well as the man’s entourage – sat there with facial expressions like fish on land, I began to look around for another place to sit.
The older guy at a two-person table next to the front door pointed at me and waved. I had to come over. The man sat and laughed so he was toasted. Every time I thought he had regained control of himself, a new wave of later roars came.
“I have sat here for many years and witnessed how that pig talks to other people. But never before have I experienced someone catching up with the same coin. Congratulations, Norwegian”, he hiccupped and asked me to take a seat on the vacant stolen seat.
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Only when I had sat down did I get a closer look at my new mate – and discovered that I knew him from the cinema screen at home in Lillehammer. It was Volker Spengler (1939–2020) – one of the stars of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s legendary cult films from the 70s and 80s.
The man was kind of handsome like in the close-ups in the movies. But no doubt that I was sitting there with a genuine Fassbinder actor. The host was – again and again – called while more and more schnapps were placed on the table.
The memory of an unpleasant afternoon that turned into a magnificent evening occurred to me when I read the other day in the newspaper that Mannfred Krug’s heirs have approved the publication of his diaries. It doesn’t really start until 1998, but has been characteristic of this guy’s normal way of dealing with other people.
In Page Up and Page Down, the actor describes how he finds great pleasure in verbally assaulting other people.
The bosses at film meetings with insolence, and users are labeled as absolute idiots, while even close friends have to put up with finalization and violent assaults.
Rabid bully
The craftsmen are also exposed to Krug’s tastelessness, because they disturb when the great artist – in the middle of the day – wants to sleep. “I am a proletarian myself – and therefore I can avoid proletarians” could explain such unfairness.
Those who have edited the book find a poor consolation in the fact that it was perhaps a brain haemorrhage with subsequent movement difficulties that turned Krug into a rabid bully.
We also get the story of when a younger colleague was expecting his child, something that was quite impractical for a gifted father of three who had absolutely no plans to leave his wife. The solution was that he got the mother and newborn child a tiny apartment in the backyard where he himself lived with his official family. The arrangement didn’t last very long, and had to come flying in small pieces around his ear after his wife smelled the fudge.
A shit storm
In 1996, Krug fronted a lavish campaign to entice Hermansen to buy shares in the privatized Telekom. There was the whole country’s darling who recommended men in the street to spend their savings on what was sure to become a new public stock.
1.9 million followed Krug’s advice, with huge losses as a consequence, after the rate went straight to the basement. The actor first reacted aggressively when disappointed and enraged buyers made him personally responsible for the disaster. Even less gifted existences then had to understand that this was solely a role he was playing.
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But the dirt storm did not let up and Manfred Krug in his older days had to settle for being remembered for just that role. When he turned 70, he said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine that he regretted the whole thing without limit, characterized the campaign as the biggest mistake of his life – and tried to console people that he too had lost a lot of money buying T-shares. (He admittedly did not say anything about how much he had soaked in on the job itself.)
Fortunately, I never met Manfred Krug again. We had probably remembered each other’s disgusting supervision – and had some sayings to offer in that context. But I supported Volker Spengler right as it happened.
We never became friends, but were able to exchange friendly thoughts about the weather and such. And then we had to help remember each other about the time when Nordmann was scared outside Diener and took a proper look at himself.
PS. I had to test out the story on my old Savignyplatz neighbor Ulrike (82). She put on an expression full of contempt: «Manne Krug? I have argued with him twice. And twice I threw beer at his head».
You can’t win them all.
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