Kaffeeklatsch mit Jo van Nelsen - 75 Jahre "Die Hesselbachs" - Episode: "Die Simulantin"
The Hesselbachs invite you for coffee and cake.
“Damn, my drop!” Do you still remember Mamma Hesselbach's legendary exclamation? Do you recall the radio and television stories about the Hesselbach company “somewhere in Hesse”?
Jo van Nelsen, born near Frankfurt and well-known on all German small arts stages, has unearthed two wonderful books that are only available in antiquarian shops: “Babba” and “Mamma,” written in 1967 by Wolf Schmidt, the inventor and unforgettable performer of Babba Hesselbach, who reworked his favorite episodes into independent stories. Van Nelsen will now read from them: indulgently reveling in quirky entanglements and hidden jabs at politics, which wonderfully still resonate today.
And the audience discovers, thanks to van Nelsen’s widely praised storytelling art, Wolf Schmidt, the radio and television veteran, for the first time as an ironically distanced novelist, who understands how to show the universal in the personal catastrophes of a Hesse small-bourgeois family and condense the absurdities of everyday life into cabaret dramas. Not least, Schmidt's wit, along with his deeply felt commitment to democracy and humanity, positions him equally alongside the second great Hesse dialect poet, Friedrich Stoltze.
The Hesselbachs were the first television family in Germany, whose series swept the streets with ratings of up to 94 percent. For that's what "blockbusters" used to be called here – street sweepers. But that was at a time when people still complained about a “little mess” and a “Roaring Stag” decorated the living room. Van Nelsen received similar acclaim at the start of the Hesselbach reading series in 2006 at the Stalburg Theater, Frankfurt/Main, where he read to sold-out houses on the first Sunday of each month for over three years.
Let yourself be transported into the Hesselbach universe full of tranquility and contemplation – and if you close your eyes, you will meet them all again: Babba and Mamma Hesselbach, the sons Willi and Peter, daughter Heidi, the Swabian accountant Münzenberger, the chief secretary Miss Sauerberg, the cleaning lady Mrs. Siebenhals, the apprentice Rudi, and all the other unforgettable characters from the successful series “The Hesselbachs.”
However, if you keep your eyes open, there is only one sitting there: Jo van Nelsen. But listening to him and watching him play everyone, one after the other and all together, is an experience you shouldn't miss!
Entry: 4 PM
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
