Heinz Winkler, one of the most famous star chefs in Germany, is dead. The 73-year-old died on Saturday night in the Rosenheim hospital after collapsing at home in Aschau. The emergency doctor who was called immediately was able to revive him, but his condition deteriorated in the clinic. Winkler eventually died of multiple organ failure.
His death came as a surprise, just a few weeks ago Winkler had spoken in interviews about gradually retiring, which he wanted to spend on Mallorca. The exceptional chef, born in 1949 as the youngest of eleven siblings in a South Tyrolean mountain farming family, had an unparalleled career after his apprenticeship. He worked in hotels and restaurants in Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy, and at the age of 24 he was head chef at the Schlosshotel Pontresina in St. Moritz. But the decisive station came later. He spent a year with Paul Bocuse in his starred restaurant in the small town of Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or near Lyon.
His most famous dishes include “zucchini blossom with black truffle”.
It was here that he probably got the decisive inspiration for his own style of cooking, which was strongly influenced by Bocuse’s nouvelle cuisine. In Winkler’s case, this meant that the focus was on a central product that was only surrounded by other ingredients. Winkler valued lightness, he called his style “Cuisine Vitale” and liked to speak of “puristic clarity and harmonious balance” as the goal of his culinary creations: “Food should inspire and not burden.” His most famous dishes include “Zucchini blossom with black truffle”, “Pigeon in parsley sauce with trumpet chanterelles” or “Rondell of lobster with kohlrabi”. He often and gladly worked with herbs and spices from his South Tyrolean homeland, he also wrote a well-regarded book about cooking with medicinal herbs.
In 2007, Heinz Winkler (left) celebrated the 35th birthday of the gourmet restaurant “Tantris” in Munich with his colleague friends Eckart Witzigmann and Hans Haas, who were also decorated with stars.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
In 1979, Winkler became head chef at the Munich restaurant Tantris, succeeding Eckart Witzigmann, who shortly afterwards became the first chef to bring three Michelin stars to Germany with his own restaurant Aubergine. In Tantris, Winkler immediately defended the two stars that Witzigmann had previously cooked there. Two years later the time had come: Winkler also received three stars, as the youngest chef in Germany at the time. He was to receive this award for a total of 20 years, with short interruptions – only his colleague Harald Wohlfahrt in the Schwarzwaldstube in Baiersbronn received this award longer, 25 years in a row.
Then, in 1991, Winkler fulfilled his lifelong dream: his own gourmet restaurant with an adjoining hotel. For 14 million Deutschmarks, he acquired a historic property on the church square in Aschau im Chiemgau, the beginnings of which date back to the late Middle Ages, and expanded it into the luxury hotel Residenz Heinz Winkler with an adjoining gourmet restaurant. Only two years ago, he told the Bild newspaper at the time, he had paid off the bank loans for it.
His lifelong dream: his own gourmet restaurant with an attached hotel on the church square in Aschau.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
The Michelin Guide remained loyal to him, although he temporarily downgraded the residence to two stars; since 2008 there were finally only two. The master soon left the management of the kitchen to other chefs. Of course, celebrities from business and society remained loyal to him – most recently, the residence even made headlines because the VW supervisory board chairman and Porsche major shareholder Ferdinand Piëch collapsed in the restaurant in August 2019 at the age of 82 and then died in the hospital.
Tragically, Heinz Winkler has now met a similar fate after his first son Manfred died of a stroke in 2013 at the age of 45. His other son from his first marriage, 43-year-old Alexander, works as a restaurant manager in the residence. Another son, 14 years old, comes from his second marriage, which broke up in 2013. Only four years ago, Winkler had married for the third time.