In addition to his work as a screenwriter for television, Grimme Prize winner Peter Probst, who lives in Munich, has written crime novels and the autofictional novel “How I invented sex”. Together with his wife Amelie Fried, he has been leading creative writing workshops for several years. His new novel “I Didn’t Kidnap Schleyer” (Antje Kunstmann Verlag) has just been published, which tells of growing up in Bavaria in the 1970s and reflects the social conflicts in the crisis year of 1977.
Monday: Bridge for strange thinkers
The Flauchersteg is the turning point for Peter Probst on his morning tour of the Isar.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
Like every morning, I bring my night-cold brain up to operating temperature with a ride on the Isar. The turning point is the Flauchersteg. What I like about it is that it stretches so beautifully diagonally over the pebble islands – “diagonal” just suits me. No sensible person can call themselves a lateral thinker anymore, but luckily it’s still possible to be a strange thinker. While walking I enjoy an audio book, currently “Where the Wolf Lurks” by the Israeli author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. The story is told so intensely that I would be annoyed if it was drowned out by traffic at the Brudermühl Bridge. The motorcade is certainly particularly dense this Monday. Because it’s Oktoberfest time again. Oh dear.
Tuesday: Favorite cafe
The advantages of Café Hülser in Giesing: No hipster fuss, fair prices and a dangerously good cake.
(Photo: Catherina Hess)
My new novel “I Didn’t Kidnap Schleyer” has just been published. I will answer press inquiries, telephone booksellers who want to invite me to a reading, and pre-readers who will describe their impressions. This is all so exciting that I can’t possibly concentrate on my next story. I prefer to keep things slower with writers and see strolling followed by a visit to a coffee house as part of my work. My favorite café is the “Hüller” on Eduard-Schmid-Straße. No hipster fuss, fair prices and a dangerously good cake. No drunk tourist would wander here thinking that a polyester beer mug hat was part of Bavarian folklore.
Wednesday: Each one a cross
Comic oratorio: Erwin Windegger in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” at the Gärtnerplatztheater.
(Photo: Christian Pogo Zach)
I finally have to work on my Oktoberfest trauma. I would prefer not to be involved in the hustle and bustle, but all over the world, as a native of Munich, people rave about Oktoberfest to me. Then I don’t want to say: “I don’t like it.” Because it’s not entirely true either. I just haven’t gotten over the shock of the dirndl and lederhosen tsunami that hit the Theresienwiese in the 1990s. Until then, everyone who didn’t want to be a bourgeois went to the Oktoberfest in jeans. Only “those from the country” wore traditional costumes. Maybe the exhibition in the inner courtyard of the Isartor: “Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt on the Oktoberwiese” has a therapeutic effect. There are large still photos of the first film shot at the Oktoberfest (1921) under red and orange bunting. By the way, if the bureaucracy actually wants to drive Valentin, Karlstadt and their museum out of the Isartor, I might as well stick myself somewhere. Then hopefully someone will feed me white sausages from the Turmstüberl, which I only eat because they come with an unsurpassed mustard. Luckily I got tickets for the revival premiere in the Gärtnerplatztheater in the evening: Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian”. If Thomas Pigor (also a weirdo) is behind it, it can only be good.
Thursday: Be a witness
Rockets approaching the VW factory in Wolfsburg? Zhanna Kadyrova’s “Russian Rocket” Instagram project makes it seem possible.
(Photo: Courtesy of the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA)
The lockdown times left me with a compulsion to travel. It has to be 10,000 steps per day. That’s why I walk to the Nazi Documentation Center, whose director Mirjam Zadoff was recently honored with the Bavarian Order of Merit. I have already seen the moving exhibition “More important than our lives – the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto”. Today I would like to look at the installation by the artist Zhanna Kadyrova. She documented interiors of public places in Ukraine that were devastated after Russian missile attacks: a library and a school. How thin the veneer of civilization is makes me more and more perplexed. I’ve been reading the newspaper from the back for a long time out of self-protection, but recently the Bavaria section has made me terribly upset.
Friday: Landler and Gstanzln
G.Rag & the Landlergschwister play Landler, Zwiefachen, Gstanzln, tavern classics & brass music – rough, weird and loud like here at Kunst im Quadrat three years ago.
(Photo: G.Rag & the Landlerg siblings)
In 1977 I dragged my parents to the cinema to see “Beerkampf” by Herbert Achternbusch with them. They were outraged. This wasn’t her Oktoberfest. I really liked the film, especially the sequence in which the beer bliss threatens to turn into brutality – like my children did today at the party in dirndls and lederhosen. But maybe I’m just too old to raise my clenched fist into the tent sky while sitting on a swaying beer bench to the brass band’s “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Stop! Alt. There is also a program for that, the “Oide Wiesn”. Play in the Herzkasperl tent G.Rag & the Landlerg siblings. I have to go there, it’s guaranteed to be a blast.
Saturday: Lucky Punch
Comedian Michael Mittermeier has started a new comedy club in the old Gasteig – now Fat Cat.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
I should listen to the radio again. My friend Arthur Dittlmann is a delight simply because of his sonorous voice and his dialect-proof language. At 2 p.m. on BR-Heimat there will be his “Care! Tradimix,” with the title “Guad eigschenkt – a Tradimix Oktoberfest beer stroll.” The repeat would come on at 10 p.m., but then I’ll stop by the “Fat Cat.” I know the tireless Barbara Bergau and Till Hofmann from the collaboration between my Lichterkette association and the Bellevue di Monaco and I would begrudge them and the “other” Munich cultural scene that the renovation of the Gasteig would be delayed for a while. Michael Mittermeier has already started his Lucky Punch Comedy Club, and perhaps there will soon be a stage there for the authors who are worried about their public presence due to the restructuring of BR radio’s cultural program.
Sunday: Beer mug on the skull
Again highly topical at the Oktoberfest: Gerhard Polt’s stage number about eight butchers who visit the Oktoberfest – at the end their leader hits a slender Nobel Prize winner over the head with a beer mug.
(Photo: imago stock&people)
For once I’m staying in bed longer, after all it’s Sunday. The “Oide Wiesn” may have reconciled me so much with Oktoberfest that I’m almost looking forward to next year. But be careful, you are not allowed to huddle during therapy. As an antidote to my hasty forgiveness, I get Gerhard Polt’s “Attack on a Spiritual Man” from the Internet. “Just place the beer mug lightly on your skull” is still an unsurpassed formulation.
Peter Probst began writing scripts while he was still studying. He is the author of numerous television crime novels (“Tatort”, “Polizeiruf 110”), comedies and historical films, which were awarded the Grimme Prize, among others. In addition to his work on television and his work as a lecturer, Probst has written crime novels and most recently a well-received trilogy of autofictional novels (“How I Invented Sex”). Together with his wife Amelie Fried, he has been leading creative writing workshops for several years. In his free time he is active on the board of Lichterkette eV.