Event

We don’t want to imitate Heinz Erhardt (that’s impossible), but rather to honor his memory, to introduce a largely unknown side of him, and above all to give the audience a hearty laugh at his wonderful art of subtle silliness—and to let him speak for himself (“Another Poem”).

Heinz Erhardt was the most popular German comedian in the late 1950s and early 1960s—but by then he already had an earlier career behind him, one that unfolded mainly during World War II. There he sat, a slender, young man in an elegant suit, at the grand piano, seemingly lost in his own world as he played musical pranks, sang pun-filled love songs, and made the audience laugh with tongue-twisting cascades of words—a linguistic artist and musical clown.

When he launched his second career, on stage and on the radio, it coincided with a time full of optimism: the Economic Miracle, the Goggo-Mobil, petticoats, kidney-shaped tables, and cocktail chairs, vacations in Italy, and the first flights to Mallorca.