Klaus Kinski
“He did that, you stupid pig!”
Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s film “Fitzcarraldo”.
© imago images / Everett Collection
Genius and madness, disgust and attraction are opposites that few unite like Klaus Kinski. A look back on the 30th anniversary of his death.
Klaus Kinski (1926-1991) struggled with himself and the rest of the world for 65 years before he gave his time in California on November 23, 1991 – and probably quite loudly. You can literally imagine how Kinski gets into an argument with Peter at the Gate of Heaven, because the first person believes he knows that Jesus “took a whip” and “punched a critic in the face” with it. Those who are unable to imagine this picture would be better off moving from heaven to the theater. There Kinski suffered a fit of rage when he brought the New Testament onto the stage and hurled at the “shit rabble”: “He did that, you stupid pig!”
The idea of the madman on duty quickly comes to mind, as in the Edgar Wallace films he wafts through the fog of London with a glassy look and suddenly shouts: “I am innocent!” But that was probably not what the choleric was. So daughter Pola (69) shocked her father in 2013 with allegations of abuse. Nastassja Kinski (60) also said that as a child he harassed her with advances.
Klaus Kinski fights in and with the jungle
Kinski was also feared on the film set, a deeply capricious creature who once declared: “People only consider bad behavior to be a kind of privilege because no one slaps their mouths.” It almost happened in the Peruvian jungle when Kinski filmed “Fitzcarraldo” in 1982 and often clashed with his “favorite enemy” and director Werner Herzog (79). It was not only Kinski who threatened to back up his wishes for changes in the script with slaps. According to Herzog, the indigenous people offered to kill Kinski. How fitting is the picture that the angry man once painted of his feelings: “My sensations are a complete mess. Creepers that threaten to suffocate me. Jungle from which I have to fight my way out.”
Time and again he got tangled up, scrambled and returned to the ducal stoic for various film projects. What do you expect from a man who calmly cooks his own shoes and then eats them – that is, Herzog, not Kinski. Without hesitation he ate other filmmakers for breakfast and the moderator of the WDR talk show “The later the evening”, Reinhard Münchenhagen (80), literally for dinner. So he did not respond to many of the moderator’s questions at all, but kept addressing him as “Mr. Münchhausen”.
Munchausen was one of the few roles that Kinski did not slip into. After all, the figure of the baron of lies does not fit a man who always blurted out what he was thinking. Kinski played the monster (Nosferatu), the killer (Jack the Ripper) and the lone fighter (Fitzcarraldo) with great conviction. The depiction of driven figures was his hobbyhorse, it never arrived, it was never enough. That may be one of the reasons Kinski never wanted to think about death: “I didn’t even start living properly.”