The mountain keeps calling – Munich

What surprises you when you visit Michael Pause at home in Kleinseeham: no mountain view, nowhere. “If I were to clear away the forest over there, I could see the Wallberg,” he says, pointing south, over to this impertinent piece of mixed forest that has simply spread over the botany. And so the man who was the TV face of “Bergauf-Bergab” on BR for 40 years for many Bavarian mountain fans actually has to walk a few rope lengths over to Seehamer See in order to be able to take a look at his beloved mountains. That doesn’t bother him. “I live in paradise here,” he says, taking a panoramic view of the farmhouse, beer garden table terrace and fruit tree meadow complete with animals, “and I’m really happy that I’m already living in paradise – because you don’t really know what will happen afterwards. “

That’s true, of course, but there are a few certainties in this life. For example, when the Tegernsee Mountain Film Festival opens again on Wednesday evening at eight in the beautiful baroque hall of the monastery, only Pause can be the one who speaks the welcome. He’s been doing this for the 20th year now: whetting the appetite for mountain films, stoking anticipation for five days of film art from all over the world. He and his team viewed 165 films from 28 countries, 65 made it into the program, and the shortlist for the jury still includes a whopping 30 hours of material on the main topic of mountains. For years now, Tegernsee has not been about outdoors and adventure, about crossing deserts or pack ice like at many other film festivals, but about pure pure. Pause says: “The mountain provides enough.”

True, otherwise the 71-year-old would not have spent most of his life there. It became clear to him this spring that the impacts were gradually getting closer: “I’ve already had to give six eulogies this year.” The three very best friends in life were there, including Hermann Magerer, his early supporter at Bayerischer Rundfunk and his boss at “Bergauf-Bergab” for 20 years. When he retired in 1998, Pause took over for another 20 years before handing over the moderation of the half-hour BR classic to Michael Düchs five years ago.

Of course, Pause remained loyal to the mountains, even though an artificial knee joint was due twelve years ago, the long-term consequence of his great passion: skiing. His confession of faith: “The good Lord sent me into the world and said: ‘You’re going to be a skier!’ I’m very grateful to him for that.” In 1969, he broke his shin over the edge of his ski boot during downhill training at the German Youth Championships. A common accident, but the bones simply won’t grow together: “I had a cast up to the top for 15 weeks, from February 27th to July 15th – that’s fatal for a 17-year-old who is still growing.” It didn’t take long for the first cartilage damage to appear, but he still decided against conscientious objection, “which would have been morally necessary,” and opted for a year in the Bundeswehr: skiing, Sonthofen sports school. The German Ski Association invited him to the training course three times in the fall, he came fifth and sixth in slalom and downhill at the German championships, and was also Munich youth champion a few times – and he still raves today: “Such a fascinating sport. This physical feeling, this game with Terrain, gravity and centrifugal force: you have the whole world to yourself.”

Father and mother are class skiers in their 20s and 30s

The role models are sitting at the dinner table at Icking’s home in Irschenhausen: father and mother, great skiers in the 20s and 30s. They go to the mountains with their six children in summer and winter: Jochberg, Herzogstand, Rotwand, Ruchenköpfe. If you casually murmur something about “turning a hobby into a career,” the pause becomes clear: “Journalism was never my hobby.” In 1974 he was in the 13th teaching department of the German Journalism School in Munich and was part of a model experiment: studies plus journalism training. “I’ve already completed 18 semesters – and no master’s degree,” he says with a laugh, “with two children and already on the mountain track – which I wasn’t even aiming for.” The boy actually wants a break SZ-Become a correspondent in Washington.

In 1969/70, at the age of 17, Pause ended up as an exchange student “at the coldest end of the USA”, in northern Minnesota. The eldest son of the host family fights in Vietnam – an exciting experience for the politically interested late ’68 man. A field trip to Washington with the United Methodist Church ended up with four weeks in Capitol Hill after he simply asked a lawmaker about an internship. His job: in the office of the United Methodist Church, directly at the Supreme Court, organizing interesting conversation partners for the visiting groups. Whenever possible he attends Senate or Congress hearings. It’s Nixon time, how exciting. But again: His father Walter, author of the bestseller “Münchner Hausberge” in 1967, turned his hobby into a career. When Alzheimer’s began to appear in the senior’s case, the junior completed the last book in his father’s series: “The 100 tours were fixed, they just had to be written.”

At BR he initially ends up as a speaker and is selected from 700 applicants

Writing is not Pause’s only talent. During his studies he dealt with politics, history and newspaper studies, which in the mid-1970s would become KW: communication studies. His first internship took him to Schwabmünchen and Wertingen in 1975, to the local editorial offices of the Augsburg General. He initially ends up as a spokesman at BR and is selected from 700 applicants: the beginning of a long, but not always wonderful, friendship, as he says: “These 20 years as a permanent employee were not the best years. I’m just not a person for authorities. I I had great colleagues, but also three or four that I never want to see again.”

The genesis of the Tegernsee Mountain Film Festival, of which Pause was to become director 20 years ago, is also a lesson in media policy. The documentary filmmaker Otto Guggenbichler, nicknamed “Alpen-Otto”, a BR veteran, sees himself as the epitome of the mountaineering television editorial team in the 60s and 70s, was previously an Italy correspondent, got to know the Trento mountain film festival there and asked himself: Why isn’t there something like this in the motherland of the mountain film genre? For example at his home in Tegernsee. Guggenbichler knows: Without the support of the BR it won’t work. And somehow this device must be able to be won, but how? A letter, why not?

And so the mayor commissions the well-known Uphill Downhill editor to draft a letter to the director asking that the BR support the planned festival as an “ideal partner”. Weeks later, the letter made its way through the departments: from the director’s office to the television editorial department, then to the main sports and leisure department and finally to the leisure editorial department, which is responsible for the mountaineering program Uphill Downhill. So the letter ends up on the desk of the very editor who drafted it for the mayor, marked “With a request for a draft answer.” That’s how bureaucracy works.

So Pause drafts another letter, essentially answering himself, leaving the crucial passage open because he suspects the director’s opinion but cannot make the decision. Two days later, the television director’s assistant called and harshly asked him to please write the letter in its entirety. In response to Pause’s objection that he doesn’t even know the director’s decision, the lady snaps into the phone: “You’ve already figured it all out anyway.” Shortly afterwards, a friendly letter signed by the director landed in Tegernsee promising to support the mountain film festival. A happy ending, but not a sure-fire success. At the beginning, says Pause, no one knew whether it would work out.

For the first time there is a large festival tent with 400 seats at the Point

It was. Many volunteers are helping, the local DAV section and its video club, and a prominent patron will soon be on board: Heiner Geißler. A credit to the mayor of Tegernsee, who was also president of the hang glider association, to which the former CDU general secretary also belonged. Festival director Pause says: “A stroke of luck. The man was a professional through and through – and was there almost every year. And he always had a good message. At a panel discussion with him on the subject of sport and nature, we had 199 seats in the hall, but 320 Visitors!” A brand that they want to top this year: For the first time, there is a large festival tent with 400 seats at the Point that needs to be filled.

Pause is of course happy when it starts again in Tegernsee on Wednesday evening. Which doesn’t mean he’s otherwise bored. There is also the job as chairman of the DAV Alpine Club Berggeist section, an illustrious hodgepodge of alpine celebrities from the Huberbuam to the safety pope Pit Schubert. And of course there is a wife, two children and five grandchildren. He wants to take more care of the latter in particular, put them on skis, go into the mountains with them and read a lot with them. A key qualification, he thinks. Because you don’t really know what will happen afterwards.