For millions, he should be the voice of their childhood: Jürgen Kluckert was the talking elephant Benjamin Blümchen in the radio play series of the same name. After the death of his predecessor Edgar Ott, Kluckert took over in 1994.
A graduate of the Ernst Busch State Drama School, Kluckert has dubbed many Hollywood stars, including Chuck Norris, Morgan Freeman and James Brolin. In the 1980s version of the TV series magnums he voiced Roger E. Mosley in the role of helicopter pilot “TC” in the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants he lent his voice to the crab character Mr. Krabs. In addition to his work as a voice actor, Kluckert also worked as an actor and was, among other things, in the crime scene to see.
In the post-war period he first lived in East Germany and played at the Maxim Gorki Theater for twelve years. “I left the GDR in 1980,” said Kluckert in an interview. “I then also acted in the Federal Republic of Germany, but I ended up more and more in the dubbing studio. In the GDR, someone said to me before: ‘You have a very pretty voice! Try it at DEFA-Synchron! You can still earn something there!” And then I did it.”
Inheriting the role of Benjamin Blümchen was a challenge, he said in an interview. “Edgar Ott died in 1994. And he also has Sinclair in The dinosaurs spoken. That was the first thing I took from him because I sounded a bit like him, that is, if I change the voice a bit. It wasn’t possible with my normal voice.” During the first recordings he “every time I said a sentence, (…) listened to a sentence from Edgar beforehand. Of course, now I don’t need it anymore. We’ve become freer and faster.”
Kluckert Benjamin Blümchen spoke for more than 70 episodes. Now the voice actor and actor has died at the age of 79.