Johann von Bülow hasn’t been to the Glockenspiel café for a long time. The place reminds him of the time when he roamed Munich as a young man and trained as an actor at the Otto Falckenberg School. Most recently, Bülow, born in 1972, often remembered. In his novel “Roxy” (published by Rowohlt), he dives into the 1980s, sometimes into a Munich glamor world. It is the story of Marc Berger, who drives home for the funeral of his best friend and looks back on his life. The idea for the novel came about in the summer of 2020 and is based on the “core experience in the middle of life”, as Bülow puts it, “that people are suddenly taken off the field”. Before the detailed interview, the guest from Berlin orders French toast and fresh fruit. Then it starts.
SZ: In your book one learns a lot about Marc Berger, how much does one learn about Johann von Bülow?
Johann von Bülow: Of course you learn a lot about me just from the fact that I wrote the novel. Because it’s a very different kind of self-expression than playing. You open up more. But you do that less about the question of how much Marc Berger is Johann von Bülow, but more about what kind of atmosphere and feeling this story spreads and the thoughts that go into it.
Marc Berger is your age, grows up as a newcomer on the outskirts of Munich and becomes an actor like you…
I believe that you can only write authentically and well about things you know something about. I know this world that is being described, and Marc is an actor like me, yes. I had a lot of fun enriching this world with characters and stories that are definitely not just retold lives.
You are one of the most famous actors in Germany. You have to realize that people are looking for parallels. How do you deal with that?
I accept that. I understand that the topic is. That you ask people you know from a different context: Which of these are you? But I really hope that at some point that will fade into the background while reading. It’s a coming-of-age story, about death, love and the interplay of the sexes. It’s not dealing with reality. The story needs to be driven by how two men met when they were young. And there I fall back on the setting of my youth. Friendship plays a big role in my life.
Is that why you avoided the first-person narrator in order to distance yourself a bit from the main character, so to speak?
Despite the choice of the third person, the first-person narrator somehow got through. It was a very deliberately chosen stylistic device, which is not just a gimmick. It also has something to do with me, also in the way I function as an actor. I’m not someone who imposes my whole soul on the audience. That’s why it’s certainly an expression I subconsciously make when you realize: Nobody says I here. Of course one can now reply, you can write in the third person for as long as you like – I can see the parallels!
So it doesn’t really help, does it?
People always feel the need to say: that’s a misnomer. But that’s okay, it’s a game to a certain extent.
Johann von Bülow is known to many as an actor, and now he is also a published author. He says: “Writing is much more demanding and diverse, and you have to reveal a lot more of what’s on your mind.”
(Photo: Carsten Koall/dpa)
What some will probably also think: Another actor writing a book …
I’m very aware of the privilege: if I hadn’t succeeded in another field, this novel would never have existed. Because fame as an actor gave me this chance. The publisher approached me and not the other way around. I also understand that fellow writers say: Now all the actors come and write books. I once asked myself: What would actors say if suddenly every film had one or two writers in it?
As an actor, you’re used to revealing yourself. Did you find this writing opening more difficult?
As an actor, you make your skin, your blood, your insides available to the characters. But you are much better protected by the role. You are part of an ensemble, a wheel in a machine. When writing, you are the whole machine. Writing is much more demanding and diverse, and you have to reveal a lot more of what’s on your mind.
In the novel, grandma says: “Good actors have to be empty vessels, without their own content.” Is that so?
In the world of theater and acting, the phrase is not news. But I always thought this picture was beautiful. In fact, being a vessel isn’t particularly flattering. And one could go further and say: Some don’t even have to empty themselves. No, just kidding. I always say: Acting is the entry into self-inflicted immaturity.
What do you mean?
Look, acting is a wonderful profession: you have to go, you have to know your lines, you have to act. You are not responsible for more. A dream! When you write, you have a huge responsibility. You have to do everything yourself, and if you don’t do anything, nothing will happen.
Have you written before?
A lot of people ask me: you’re 50 now, have you ever done that? It’s a little weird saying “no” then. However, as a teenager I was always involved with language and wrote a lot. But then came acting and then it didn’t really matter anymore. It’s something of a rediscovery now. Like I found something in the attic that I forgot up there.
Have you read Joachim Meyerhoff?
Naturally! I’m a very big fan of his books, especially Oh, That Gap, That Awful Gap. That makes sense, since I was an acting student myself a year after Meyerhoff left the Falckenberg School. I know the acting staff very well. In my opinion, this book is second to none.
Unlike him, you do not write explicitly about your life, as you emphasize, but mix more fiction into your novel.
Perhaps my life is not quite as exciting, worth telling and rich in punch lines as that of Joachim Meyerhoff.
There is another link to Joachim Meyerhoff: In the current film adaptation “When will it finally be like it never was” Your son Casper plays along as Joachim’s older brother.
Now that’s funny: you’re the first to bring this up. I haven’t said anything about it so far and waited for it to become an issue at some point.
Casper von Bülow (2nd from left) in the movie “When will it finally be like it never was”, in the ensemble with Laura Tonke and Devid Striesow (centre, standing), among others.
(Photo: Warner Bros.)
After the performance, you want to call out to him: keep it up! Do you see him as an actor yourself, what is your advice?
My son has already acted in “Druck”, a series that is very popular with young people. This gave him a great agency and most recently the casting request for the Meyerhoff film. I filmed him doing the casting video in our courtyard. Afterwards I thought to myself: They must be crazy if they don’t take him! That was the moment when I realized: It’s kind of his thing. But the nice thing is: He is interested in other things besides acting. He did an exhibition in Berlin and is applying to various art schools.
In your novel, your own youth flickers in neon colors, a youth in the eighties, partly in Munich and the surrounding area. Which memories from this time were particularly formative for you?
I remember hanging out in stores when we were 16 or 17 and no one even thought to ask who was what age. That has changed a lot from today. There was already a youth protection law back then, and under-18s actually had to leave the disco at twelve, as they said back then.
How did you still experience Munich in the eighties and nineties?
I left the theater in 1995 and only came back sporadically. For a long time it felt as if nothing would change in Munich. While I had the impression that there was a lot happening everywhere else, I felt that people always go to the same bars and clubs here. A kind of shift only began with the Kunstpark Ost. Before, I found it fascinating that Munich simply stands still. But maybe that was just my impression.
Bülow’s novel is called “Roxy” and is set in Munich in the 1980s. The “Roxy” café on Leopoldstrasse does not serve as a backdrop.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Her novel is called “Roxy”, in the story there is a classy disco called “Roxy”, which has nothing to do with the real Café Roxy on Leopoldstrasse. Why the name?
Roxy is an umbrella term for me, everyone knows a Roxy or a shop called Roxy. And everywhere. A friend of mine recently said: The disco in Flensburg where we used to go was called Roxy. Obviously for a lot of people that’s a keyword, a kind of promise.
Did you know Café Roxy, did you often go there?
No. In fact, we often went to the Parkcafé. And of course in the old P1. And then there was a place on Leopoldstrasse called Roses. A friend of ours, Oliver Berger, was the first to put on ironic hits. That was our living room, we were always there!
Would you rather have spent your youth in Munich today than back then?
No, absolutely not.
Johann von Bülow: Roxy, reading, Tuesday, March 28, 8 p.m., Volkstheater Munich, Tickets at muenchner-volkstheater.de