Why cabaret artist Monika Gruber wants to quit – Munich

And then they play “Gonna fly now”, the immortal soundtrack from “Rocky”. Anyone who doesn’t immediately start dancing or looking for a staircase to sprint up must be made of wood. That’s definitely not Monika Gruber. Already at the first “Da da daaa, da da daaa” she beams all over her face, wants to go, but she has linked arms with two men, and they are waiting dutifully for their assignment, only then can the escort start.

Once across the ballroom, the young men lead the elegantly dressed lady towards the stage with measured steps. And it cannot be overlooked that the woman in the floor-length, pink evening dress would rather dance to express herself than be dutifully led to her seat. “Tryin’ hard now, it’s so hard now” is what “Rocky” says, but this time Moni plays along for once, leaves it at a few hip wiggles and finally takes a seat on the armchair reserved for the award winner, but at the very front Edge – leaning back is not. Not yet.

On Saturday evening, in front of around 900 guests in the ballroom of the Deutsches Theater, Monika Gruber was honored with the Karl-Valentin-Order by the carnival society Narrhalla for her stage career. Statement of the jury: You know how to make your audience happy. Also: subtle, sharp-tongued, subtle, fireworks of punch lines, things like that. On the other hand, the last sentence is interesting: “She herself sees humor as generally the best way not to despair of existence.”

She hesitated about accepting the award

In the excited atmosphere at the ball in the Deutsches Theater, such formulations are of course lost like concrete blocks. Better to refer there by name dropping on the impressive list of ancestors. Because Gruber is now, so to speak, in a row with 51 humor greats like Markus Söder, Andreas Gabalier, Philipp Lahm, the Klitschkos, Pope Benedikt, Til Schweiger – no, that’s getting mean now. After all, Loriot, Gerd Fröbe, Harald Juhnke and Sir Peter Ustinov are among the winners, real grandees when it comes to fun. No, the Gruber woman and Valentin Karl: they go well together. She herself doesn’t see it that way at all, had hesitated whether to accept the award.

“It really isn’t now fishing for compliments“, she says later next door in the silver hall, “as a Bavarian you grow up with the humor of Valentin and Gerhard Polt, but I’m not really a thinker around the corner, but someone who sees things and names them. But vain, as every artist is, I then thought to myself: If you get a price, be happy and take it with you!” With a joke I got the curve, but even in these few sentences a facet of Monika Gruber appears, which one does not know from the always wonderfully direct “Chainsaw Goschn” (Gruber about Gruber): self-doubt.

Apparently her day had already started with that. Via Instagram she had asked her more than 200,000 followers for tips against migraines. “The horror in the morning has a name: Gruber,” she writes, “look at me, I’ve got a migraine today, I feel like I’m sick.” In the evening there is nothing to see. Gruber looks great, really glows, laughs a lot, has to wipe away a few emotional tears during Helmut Schleich’s laudatory speech, seems to feel really good, happy, and also speaks openly about her reasons for saying goodbye to the stage. And yet you don’t know exactly what it looks like inside, whether there might not be a little façade involved as a protective wall. After all, the woman went to the Zerboni drama school for two and a half years, just a stone’s throw away on Paul-Heyse-Strasse. How much is Monika Gruber always in her stage alter ego? Who knows.

The trained foreign language secretary was omnipresent

What is certain, however, is that in the noughties, many rubbed their eyes “that the most successful cabaret artist in Bavaria is a woman,” as Helmut Schleich previously stated in the laudatory speech. Whether television, cinema, stage, books or gossip columns during the celebrity relationship with Paulaner boss Andreas Steinfatt and since 2018 with the former freestyle skier and Red Bull manager Thomas Überall: the trained foreign language secretary from the farm in Titkofen near Erding was omnipresent , even in the Bundestag, where she and her colleague Christian Springer campaigned for support for Syrian refugees for his “Oriental Helpers Campaign”.

Even the “Spiegel” praised her in the highest tones at the time, says Schleich: “In their eyes you are doing real cabaret today. But you are not right and not left, you are where the people are, you have kept your free spirit , think without guard rails, have always remained true to yourself, left BR and ZDF because you felt you were being treated unfairly.”

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With a heavy heart, she also canceled the laudatory speech for the Karl-Valentin-Order 2020, Markus Söder, after Werner Steer, the then director of the Deutsches Theater, had shown “really impossible behavior towards me and my employees”, Gruber said in the evening and adds with a shark’s grin: “The term of office of every despot comes to an end at some point. That gives us all hope.”

“I don’t want to miss the point where it might start to get embarrassing.”

But not only Steer’s term of office is over, Gruber will also play her program “Without Words” for the last time on November 15 in the KIA hall in Nuremberg. She will be 52 then – not really an age for a stage person. There are other reasons for leaving cabaret, as she explained in October 2021: “I don’t want to miss the point when it might start to get embarrassing, when I become my own caricature. That’s when it’s time to say it very quickly : It used to be better!”

In the silver hall, she now adds another explanation: “Unfortunately, I’m getting more and more nervous as I get older, even after all the performances. I thought it would get better, but it’s getting worse. This Know what happens when you’re stuck or have a total blackout! I used to be brave, but now the expectations are so high…” There it is again, the self-doubt.

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And that, although the fans in the Deutsches Theater are also cheering their hearts out when she starts her acceptance speech, of course not without – like colleague Schleich before – inserting a gender swerve: “And to all those who call themselves a cat feel: a hearty meow in the round.” Before she starts, she mumbles into the microphone “Whoa, I have to take out my Schua” – and reaps the next storm of cheers: the Gruber, one of us! A middle-aged woman sitting next to me, apparently a Gruber novice, only says: “I like her. It’s a shame that she’s going to stop.” So it is with many viewers of the scene.

Colleague Luise Kinseher suspects “that she will surprise us”

Helmut Schleich had expressed understanding for the decision and expressly approved of her further career plan with the sausage stand in front of the National Opera: “an enrichment for Munich and the cabaret continuation in real life.” Meanwhile, colleague Luise Kinseher says on the phone that she can imagine “that she will surprise us with new ideas and projects”. They both worked together with the same author, Thomas Lienenlüke, and occasionally stood together in front of the camera.

Gruber himself remains vague. “I have a few projects that I’m working on that aren’t ready for a decision yet,” she says in the Silbersaal. “If what I’m working on turns out to be something, then maybe I’ll be on TV again.” And otherwise? “Let’s see. My parents are just getting older, my mother is 78, my father is 84. You don’t know what’s coming, that’s why I like to be there for them, and when I’m always on tour, there’s just no time. ” Actually, she would have liked to have brought Mama Leni to the award ceremony with her concentrated mother joke, “but she doesn’t like to be the center of attention – that’s actually how I am, whether you believe it or not.” There it is again, the gap between the stage grubber and Monika from Erdinger Land.

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had in October Mercury and Upper Bavarian Volksblatt reports that her “luxury villa” is for sale, a “dream home for 6.3 million euros”. Is that true? “I’m still in Erding,” she says curtly. The colleague from the boulevard wants to know whether it will stay that way. She says: “Let’s see.” It’s none of your business. She now wants to do her thing, strip off the role of a public woman, loosely based on “Rocky”: “Gonna fly now, flying high now. Gonna fly, fly, fly.”