cabaret
Dudenhöffer: Audiences no longer dare to laugh
The cabaret artist Gerd Dudenhöffer is 75 years old: People “ask themselves with every sentence: Are we even allowed to laugh about this anymore?” (archive image) photo
© picture alliance / Birgit Reichert/dpa
Gerd Dudenhöffer has been appearing as Heinz Becker for around 40 years. Now he is 75 years old. Is he thinking about quitting?
Laughing freely at all sorts of jokes in a cabaret: According to the experiences of Saarland cabaret artist Gerd Dudenhöffer, this no longer works for audiences as it used to. “People are no longer relaxed. They are very insecure. With every sentence they ask themselves: Are we even allowed to laugh about this anymore?” Dudenhöffer told the German Press Agency.
He notices this clearly when he appears on stage as Heinz Becker. In this role, Dudenhöffer has played a nagging pensioner with suspenders and a “batch hat” since 1985 who talks about society, politics and culture. To the government, to citizens’ money, to refugees.
“People are trapped within themselves,” said Dudenhöffer. But you’re in a cabaret. “We do satire. So that people don’t accept it gratefully and say: At least you can still laugh about it.” But they looked to the neighbor to see if he was laughing because they thought: “Now everyone blames me when I laugh,” he said.
Dudenhöffer is still carrying on at 75
Dudenhöffer turns 75 on October 13th. He still enjoys being on stage: “I do it because I enjoy it.” He makes around 80 appearances a year: He is currently on tour in Germany with his program “Mo so Mo so” (Sometimes like that). In it he not only appears in the role of Heinz Becker for the first time, but also plays his wife Hilde Becker. Many performances, each with hundreds of seats, are sold out.
He doesn’t yet know when he will stop. “I believe that the decision may come relatively quickly,” he said. For 2025 he is planning a new edition of his program under the Saarland title “DOD” (dead), in which Heinz Becker has to come to terms with the loss of his wife Hilde. He was unable to play the program as planned in 2020 due to the corona pandemic.
“DOD” (Life is the End) has a normal term of two years. After that he could imagine that “then it’s over.” Unless he comes up with a new idea that excites him. He wrote 20 programs and also played the role in the television series “The Heinz Becker Family” from 1992 to 2004.
Heinz Becker happens to be from Saarland
How does he explain Heinz Becker’s success? “I don’t think I ever changed Heinz in a way that people could understand,” said Dudenhöffer. For her, it is still the same Heinz, although he has become “more sedate, calmer and more political” over time. “I’m just lucky that the audience still likes Heinz so much.”
Heinz Becker has no idea, but he chatters about everything. And always has an opinion. He has been taking his viewers into his small, bourgeois world for almost 40 years. The fact that he was a Saarlander who spoke Saar-Palatinate was more of a coincidence, Dudenhöffer said about his alter ego. The figure could have come from somewhere else. “It works the same way in Fulda, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Berlin.”
The trained commercial artist recently rediscovered the symbol. That came as a surprise to him, he said. He has now set up a small workplace at home in Bexbach, Saarland – with a drawing board and pens. “And when I feel like it, I sit down and have some peace and quiet.”