A few weeks ago, Mike Krüger announced his departure from show business. The entertainer can look back on an impressive comedy career. The stupid bard celebrates his 70th birthday on Tuesday.
After more than 40 years of comedy business, Mike Krüger recently announced the end of his career. A peaceful retirement is the order of the day, his wife above all deserves it, he explained.
And he deserves it himself too. He will be 70 years old on December 14th. He can give himself a pension as a present. At least that’s what he says.
Of course, someone like Mike Krüger can never quite leave it. Once a circus horse, always a circus horse. That’s why he continues a little, with his own TV station, so to speak. In his two-story apartment in Hamburg-Wellingsbüttel – “we live downstairs and there is room for the company upstairs” – he moderates the format “7 days, 1 head” on his YouTube channel, in which “I think about everything is just about “.
In memory of “7 days, 7 heads”
This is reminiscent of the legendary RTL show “7 Days, 7 Heads”, with Gaby Köster, 60, and Jochen Busse, 80, which Rudi Carrell produced, among others. His friend Mike Krüger was a permanent fixture from 1996 to 2005. By then it had long since developed into an all-purpose weapon in German showbiz. His programs “Vier gegen Willi” (ARD), “Punkt, Punkt, Punkt” (Sat.1) and “Krüger sees everything” (RTL) ran for years.
So now he’s 70. Like almost every comedian, he has had to experience the hardship of life. There he was still Michael Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, who was born purely by chance in Ulm on the way to Hamburg, where his parents lived. The baby was born as a seven-month-old child paralyzed on one side and lay in the incubator for six months. The mother died at the age of three.
“I actually know very little about it,” said Mike Krüger in 2015 when he presented his autobiography “My God, Walther – life is often plan B” at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “When my father died, I found my mother’s death certificate and it said that she died in a hotel room in Paris. I thought: Paris is a big city. Did she not make it to the hospital or what Was that going on? Unfortunately, I never really discussed it with my father. He always blocked it off very well. “
The father, an authorized signatory at the Norddeutsche Treuhandgesellschaft, remarried. The boy came to a boarding school in Büsum on the North Sea. Finally he went back to Hamburg, where he graduated from the Norderstedt grammar school with a high school diploma. After school he did an apprenticeship as a concrete worker and was involved in the construction of the new Hamburg Elbe tunnel. Then Krüger went to the Bundeswehr, after which he began to study architecture.
His transformation into Mike Krüger
At the beginning of the 70s, Michael Friedrich Wilhelm changed to Mike. It was the high time of the idiot: The Insterburgs with Karl Dall, 1941-2020, were stars, Ulrich Roski, 1944-2003, Schobert & Black as well – and of course Otto Waalkes, 73. Mike Krüger fit into this ranks wonderfully, with his Music, his humor, his looks.
There was someone on the stage singing about a clumsy man who stumbled through life. A simple melody that was accompanied with two fingerings (A minor, G major) on the guitar. He wrote it when he was 15. Text sample: “Walther was not tall, was rather short, but still he believed he was one of the greatest of the little ones.” And the audience groaned to the common refrain “My God, Walther!”
This song was a huge hit. “Mein Gott, Walther” came out as an album (with other songs). “Due to the great success of the LP, I even considered going into show business,” he said in an interview with the “FAZ”. “I didn’t want to be a comedian or a star, I wanted to finance my studies and have it more pleasant during the semester break than to work on the construction site. If I had sold 100,000 of the LP instead of 800,000, I would be an architect today, I guess . “
But that’s how he became a star. This was followed by other nonsense hits such as “Bodo with the Bagger” and “Welthits aus Quickborn”, especially the album “Der Nippel” sold 900,000 times. Mike toured Germany and filled the halls. Then the film industry came up with the idea that someone like that could also fill the cinemas – and put Thomas Gottschalk, 71, at his side as a congenial partner.
Mike Krüger told “Spiegel” how the film career began: “The producer Carli Spiehs had Thomas Gottschalk and me write the script ourselves, four weeks at Tegernsee, an expensive hotel with the families. Money didn’t matter. Then at some point we were sitting together and wanted to solemnly hand over the script to him. Spiehs, an Austrian, was enthusiastic. “Great, we’ll do that. But the title doesn’t work.” He wanted a ‘supertitle’, that was ‘the most important thing of all’. So everyone sat at this long table and considered. Until suddenly Thea Gottschalk asked: ‘What do you think of’ super noses ‘?’ She must have seen both of us in profile. The one with the super noses. Carli Spiehs thought it was great. “
The films “Die Supernasen”, “Zwei Nasen fill Super”, “Piratensender Powerplay”, “Geld oder Leber” or “Der Spenkrechtstarter” were big hits.
45th wedding anniversary with his wife Birgit
In the meantime it has become much quieter around him. He is happily married to his wife Birgit (one daughter) – a rare exception in his branch. He says he’s just not the type to seek temptation. “And with comedians it’s not quite as intense as with pop singers or international stars who are downright besieged by girls. I didn’t need bodyguards, nor did I have to fend off someone in front of hotels.” The couple celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary on December 12th.
Two days later, his 70th birthday fans, who are still numerous, can watch his “very first TV show” on ZDF from 1981 on the YouTube channel “7 Tage, 1 Kopf”. The title was taken from the song of the same name: “Oh, you’re Mike”. 13 million viewers watched at that time.