Harald Krassnitzer and Ann-Kathrin Kramer: A love in Wuppertal
I thought she was a bitch and showman.
When you ask the two television actors Ann-Kathrin Kramer and Harald Krassnitzer how they got to know each other, they look at each other and say, "But that was so long ago?" He strokes her leg, with an almost sacred gravity. She smiles mischievously. And one thinks: why do they hesitate with the story of the beginning, which tells each couple, if it makes sure of itself. Or is this really a happy couple, one that does not need the story from the beginning?
Nataly Bleuel (center) in conversation with Harald Krassnitzer and Ann-Kathrin Kramer.
When they met, Ann-Kathrin Kramer was 32 years old and had just had a son with actor Jan Josef Liefers. Harald Krassnitzer was 38, free and adventurous, and the "mountain doctor" in Tyrol. Two years later, when they were still the surprise couple to many, she said, "I first had to learn that he is a very political, committed, well-read person, and charming and funny." That also says something about his image of the Austrian Schmonzettenhelden, but above all about their expectations. And she also confessed at the time that she was not used to being in such a hurry because she was one of those women who "yearn for security while at the same time taking a secure grip on completely different men". When you read that sentence to her today, Kramer snorts and shouts, "That's what I said?" Krassnitzer: "That was probably meant for your former relationship."
His slowness has driven me crazy!
It seems like from other lives, it was eleven years ago, when shooting the movie "Hurenmord". Krassnitzer was to play a priest who can not divulge the murderer because of his confessional secrets; Kramer his sister. "When a team meets for the first time to read the screenplay together," Krassnitzer interjects quickly, before Kramer can breathe, "everyone gives the tacker first to show who's the biggest." Ann Kathrin Kramer grins and says: "He's just Austrian, he talked so awkward, and this slowness has driven me insane!" He shrugs, looks at her - stubborn - and says, "I thought she was a bitch and showman."
Harald Krassnitzer was once considered a womanizer. However, he has said, "machos with testicles" he thinks monkey and if he was even attractive, then maybe because the women found him "nice". "I never really fathomed it, but maybe ... that I reassure her?"
Harald Krassnitzer gave the Frauenversteher
She wanted to be robber captain, he has a calming effect on women.
That's - you notice it when you chatted with him for a while, in the wine-covered courtyard of the Wuppertal local pub, where they call him Harry - a typical Krassnitzer phrase. Careful understatement. He smiles so modest that one can not consider him coquettish - rather modest, witty. In acting one calls such an economical use "Unterspielen". One has to look into this restrained face to fathom what attracts one so reassuringly.
Maybe that's what happened to Ann-Kathrin Kramer? In the courtyard, lit up by the last rays in the early evening, she sits at the table facing Eck. Her purple coat shines in the sun, her blond curls too. And if she does not look away from the conversation into a distance, with her chin resting on the backs of her hands, but looking at one unrelated - then one has the feeling that one could fall into those eyes. So open are they, light blue and deep.
Actually, the professional is not so much a topic in our everyday life at home.
After ten years Kramer and Krassnitzer got married, they are asked about their "secret of luck" and how love can succeed. They betray that there was only friendly love out of which her falling in love had developed: She had problems in her "former relationship", because he had first given the women's understanding - until then the first kiss came in between. From the very beginning, however, her culture of debate was also important to her; he had first to learn not to defend himself in defiance.
She: "He meets others very openly and takes them seriously, is philanthropic, cheerful, and he has preserved something innocent." This empathy is very engaging. He: "Ann-Kathrin's directness to always say what she thinks and feels made me startled, but then dressed equally." She says you have to let go to be free and alone. He says he used to be jealous when she was offered more interesting roles or was at the center of attention.And that he learned from her to talk about his feelings and his male self-image.
Calling on the phone during the week would be too expensive - because: I'm talking so slowly ...
Pretty soon after the first kiss, they moved together. But not to Munich, Vienna or Berlin - but far from the industry: in a half-timbered house in Bergisches Land. Their parents and brothers also live there and are there for their son when they work at the same time. Leo is twelve now and also says to Harry Daddy. He comes home every Friday night when he turns. Then they enjoy the country and the peace and to be out of the hustle and bustle. And if you, as now, steals a little bit of their precious time together in Wuppertal at the weekend, you get to feel that they would like to spend their time alone by the fireplace next to the bar with a good wine. They touch each other gently, they joke together, act in love and not silly, but arrived. He has not been skydiving and bunjeejumpen for a long time; but now he seems too much to be sold. And she no longer pulls her backpack through Rhodes to paint portraits of tourists.
Ann-Kathrin Kramer had finished school at the age of 16, drifting around with boys in her hometown of Wuppertal and sometimes measured in the farpink - and once when asked if she felt like a girl rather than a princess or a gypsy woman, she replied: "robber chief 'There you are the strongest.'
Ann-Kathrin Kramer is effusive, her husband a doubter
Lovers with suspension railway: Wuppertal is the hometown of Ann-Kathrin Kramer.
After ten months of Greece, she did an apprenticeship as a stage designer and decorated shop windows. At 19, she founded a decoration company in Munich. Even today she finds nothing to have lived as a young girl so free from the parents. "I have always done what was important to me at the moment," she says, "without thinking what it might lead to." She married and separated soon. Grew the high school diploma. And yet learned to act. "Like any kid, I played the wall and moved myself to tears," she says. Unlike other children, she stayed there. Because: "Inside me are more feelings than a human can grasp. If you look into their eyes now, you can see that exuberance and fearlessness.
Unlike Harald Krassnitzer. He is a hesitant, a doubter, and above all to himself - and likes to explain why: "Whenever I move to a new city, I have drawn on a map with pen all the ways that I had already gone . " Finally, the city should be covered by a fine blue net, because then they had met her. When he played in Graz, he had not been able to get beyond a thick beam for a long time: the same way between flat and theater.
He has preserved something innocent.
"I was sitting on the bike, and suddenly I had the idea of just taking a different route, I was completely intoxicated with my crazy genius and felt like I'm on the safe path now."
He crashed into a pothole. "And since then," he says, "I know that I must never be safe again." Ann-Kathrin Kramer cackles loud, because: You could interpret the story quite differently! However, he insists on the self-doubtful claim, looks at her with great seriousness and says: "In my whole life I was sure of only one thing - and that's this woman."
Their directness only frightened me, but then attracted me equally.
It can now gain something from its deliberation, for example depth and complexity. He also questioned the theater. It was in 1995 when he played the "Troerninnen" in Vienna, a play about the horrors of war. Meanwhile, people farther south in Bosnia slaughtered. "This simultaneity, this presumptuous attempt on the safe stage to portray the suffering of people who snipes their children out of their hands ... that was unbearable," says Krassnitzer. Since he preferred to watch TV and gave the mountain doctor, the winemaker king Thomas Stickler or the special investigator Moritz Eisner. He finds that less hypocritical. And does not run his profession on TV with less ambition. He says they have both. Is there competition in the relationship?
Kramer looks at him defiantly ... and there Harald Krassnitzer switches a switch, from a thoughtful conversation to a humorous slugfest, the two of them master it with relish. "Every morning at breakfast," he says, "your elbows will be driven out, and then the eggcups and plates will fly around your ears, and everyone will see that he covers himself." She smiles and says that the professional is not such a big topic in her everyday life at home. "And during the week on the phone," says Krassnitzer, "would be too expensive - because: I'm so slow ..."
Incidentally, Harald Krassnitzer is a celebrity who thanks after the conversation for taking time, "for us". It could be considered provocative understatement.But you can also easily find that a downright old-fashioned polite man with a very independent woman makes a pretty successful couple.
About the person: Ann-Kathrin Kramer and Harald Krassnitzer
Ann-Kathrin Kramer, 43, Commissioners often play on TV, the curious nun Camilla or even a Wuppertal kiosk owner. She wrote the script herself. One of her favorite roles, she says, has been the "competitor" of 1997 so far. There she is a young businesswoman who is driven into competition with her superiors and falls in love with them.
Her partner is Charlotte Schwab, with whom she later becomes "Das Duo". Something has happened in this film that makes playing extraordinary for them: "It was possible to let go and to let unknown, new things come to you." She also experienced something similar when she shot the psycho-thriller "Ungesühnt": courage, trust and love of the job.
Harald Krassnitzer, 49, grew up in Grödig near Salzburg, his father was a locksmith, his mother worked in a confectionery factory. Already during his apprenticeship as forwarding merchant he played alongside and landed at the theater, in Salzburg, Graz, Vienna, Saarbrücken. He became known on television as a "mountain doctor", ORF "crime scene" commissioner and "winegrower king".
If you ask him about his favorite role so far, you can confuse Krassnitzer. "In retrospect, I always think it could have been better." His wife appreciated his withdrawn play as a husband between two women in "My Husband, His Beloved and Me" (2009). Privately, Krassnitzer, like her, is committed against the abuse of children, for Africa and the Austrian Social Democrats.
