"I do my own dirty work!"
The comedian Ludwig Manfred Lommel
In the 1920s and 1930s, Ludwig Manfred Lommel (1891-1962) was considered the biggest act on German radio, but today? His son, the director, actor and Fassbinder intimate Ulli Lommel, called him the "man of a thousand voices", because in his radio sketches, which often revolved around the characters Paul and Pauline Neugebauer from the imaginary Runxendorf in Silesia, he always spoke all the characters himself. "The other broadcasters in the world / need a dozen expensive actors for every scene - I do my own dirty work!", he wrote in a couplet from 1928.
During the "Third Reich", Lommel also appeared on the big screen for several years. In 1936/37, he played the leading role in three feature films by Heinz Paul and between 1937 and 1939 in seven short films by Alfred Stöger. During the war, Propaganda Minister Goebbels included him in the "Gottbegrandetenliste" (God-gifted list) of actors needed for film production.
Ulli Lommel created a memorial to his father in the film Adolf and Marlene (1977). The meeting between Hitler and Lommel staged in the film can hardly be surpassed in terms of absurdity. There has rarely been a comedian in this country as headstrong and eccentric. This is evidenced not only by his numerous surviving audio samples, but also by his films, in which he - like his distant kindred spirit Otto Waalkes - never bothered with realistic acting. There is always a screw loose with this not entirely politically correct comedian, he doesn't play in the ensemble, but aside from it. Lommel just does his own dirty work. (Rolf Aurich)
The program "I do my own dirty work!" The comedian Ludwig Manfred Lommel is organized in cooperation with the Deutsche Kinemathek.
