Mourning for filmmakers and painters: Herbert Achternbusch is dead

He was a director, writer and passionate painter: Herbert Achternbusch died at the age of 83. The artist was not only valued in his native Bavaria for his subversive and sarcastic humor.

The film director, writer and painter Herbert Achternbusch is dead. He died at the age of 83, as the city of Munich announced. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” had previously reported on it.

Achternbusch produced almost 30 films – mostly on a small budget. His first film as a director was in 1974 “The Andechser Feeling”. His production “Das Gespenst” sparked blasphemy allegations in the early 1980s – in the film, Jesus climbed from the cross in a Bavarian monastery to sleep with a young superior. His work also includes 20 plays, 40 books and hundreds of paintings.

“I don’t even want to have died in Bavaria”

Born out of wedlock in Munich in 1938, Achternbusch grew up with his grandmother in the Bavarian Forest after his mother’s suicide. His grandmother taught him what was right and wrong, said Achternbusch as a grown man.

Achternbusch studied fine arts in Nuremberg and Munich and soon discovered filmmaking in addition to painting. Later he was also active as a writer and actor, he was the main actor in his own films. “Universaldilletant” Achternbusch once said of himself: “Nobody is worse than me.”