"He recognizes with me the secret of the moment"
The actress Michaela May and the television director Bernd Schwadwald can not be close enough to each other.
There are these apartments that you enter and think, "Here I could move in immediately!" Where one likes to loung on the sofa and never want to get up again. In the penthouse of Michaela May and Bernd Schadewald for example. In spitting distance to Munich Viktualienmarkt, from the roof garden you can see to the Frauenkirche. Everything is bright, new, yet cozy - the fireplace, the gray seating area, the modern kitchen. Although the residents are a couple of quite mature age, she is 59, he 60, the apartment looks like just reassigned. No dusty bookcase with works from the seventies and eighties, no photo walls with holiday pictures, no trinkets from various flea markets. Here live two people with taste who have radically skinned their furniture. "True," says Michaela May, "I left everything at that time, my former husband is a traditionalist and more attached to the old stuff than me."
Bernd Schadewald has emerged from the depths of the flat, a slender, attractive man with gray-stained, rather full hair, who often looks austere and ascetic in photographs, but in reality is very approachable and cheerful. A woman type. "Do you want the coffee? Who wants tea?" He asks. "We also have strawberry cake there," she says, smiling at him. A loving tone, light touches when passing, clearly a couple with a high feel-good factor.
"What do you like about him?" I ask shortly after on the roof terrace. The question is a bit direct, especially at the beginning of the conversation, but the two seem so relaxed that they dare. She thinks, smiles: "Beautiful skin, humor, intelligence, extreme imagination, and how he recognizes and enjoys the mystery of the moment with me." And what does he like about her? He answers without thinking, "She is very generous, not only in material matters, but also in human disappointments, always trying to make the best out of it." A quick glance - was that right? You can feel it depends on what the other one says. Everything is still important. Intimate look. Tender smile. A writer who feels a bit unnecessary. They are a beautiful couple, this voluptuous, brown-brown curly, down-to-earth Bavarian and the slender, intellectual Lübeck, who has lived in Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin. She is happy, spontaneous, open, he is too, but more restrained.
"The May has left", it rushed in the forest of leaves, as Michaela May 2004 separated after 23 years of marriage from her husband, the business lawyer Jack Schiffer. She had fallen so madly in love with director Bernd Schadewald one year earlier during the filming of "Polizeiruf 110" that she gave up everything for him - a man with whom she had raised her children together, a marriage in which she cared well was the role of the middle-class, successful actress, whose life had gone so far, no corners and crises knew.
It has overwhelmed me so much, as nothing has ever rolled over me.
"It has so overwhelmed me," says Michaela May, "like me has never rolled over." It was a commissioned work, says Schadewald, nothing overly exciting for one, who likes to work as a director and scriptwriter with difficult, socially relevant substances, the 1991 silver Grimme Award for the ZDF movie "The Hammer Killer" and in 1999 with the Two-parter "A Big Thing" about the hostage drama by Gladbeck had caused a stir and super quotas.
So a man for whom a "Polizeiruf 110", which dealt with old art and new Nazis, was nothing special. He did not know the actress Michaela May personally. "She was put in my face," he grins. I was forewarned, she says, Bernd is considered a difficult director, no one who goes on a cuddle course. She decided to be careful, not wanting to be intimidated by him. The first reading in the production office. One found oneself sympathetic. And slowly a little bit more. But both were married, she might feel a bit more than he, no one was looking. And then suddenly there was his gaze, which brushed her as if by accident, discreetly, but more often. "He stood there with his hands behind his back and looked at me." Yes, it shimmers, he admits. They both felt it, but did not speak the feeling. She found that he was looking for her presence, knocked on her caravan for delays: "In ten minutes it goes on," that was actually the task of the receptionist, not his. Butterflies in the stomach. And a good cooperation. "I want to trust a director.If he says let it go, make it quieter, then I have to be able to rely on it. I could do that with Bernd. "
Good cooperation, both know, can be erotic. You swing together, develop, drop. Very carefully, he says, they both dealt with this growing sympathy. Did one have to take it seriously, this tingling sensation, this yearning that can no longer be suppressed? At her age, both bound, in her case with a still-school-age child? She says, "Love can not be explained, love is easy." When the filming was over, she wanted to look at the patterns in the cutting room and came too late. "Do not we want to drink at least one wine together?" She suggested. A momentous wine, shortly thereafter she flew to Ghana as patron of the Cystic Fibrosis Society, on the return flight with a stopover in Amsterdam. The first night together. After that, they decided to tell their partners. She flew to Munich, he to Berlin.
It was hard for him, too, but she went through the Apocalypse. Did she do that? Destroy her family, home to her daughters Alexandra and Lilian? "You can not fall in love again with 50, Mom," they exclaimed indignantly, it would be a long time before the contact with them was the same as before. It was Christmas, the youngest daughter was hospitalized with pneumonia, the circle of friends was shocked, all the coordinates of her life collapsed - yet she moved from home, to the hotel, to him, making a radical cut that suited her open, straightforward beings, but almost overwhelmed them anyway. While Bernd Schadewald preferred to travel through life with small luggage, she was deeply rooted in Munich, a celebrated actress, popular hostess, solidly married wife. She had to give up more than he did.
You can fall in love, even if you are married. Who does not want to hurt others, injures himself.
"I was torn," she says, "my parents have been married for over 60 years, did I have the right to just throw my marriage after 23 years, I did not want to be the cause of so much pain." After a few weeks she could not stand it anymore. "I tried to beam back into my family." She was ill, she did not eat, did not sleep, she longed. You can not swap a big one for a smaller one, she knows now. Secretive, hesitant meetings, full of guilt. How long do you want to wait? He urged, we are no longer the youngest. The fact that now the public was informed and reported with relish on their separation, did not make things easier. Bernd Schadewald did not give up. "I've drummed like crazy," he admits, "although I found these fluctuations very difficult." But she could not, she was frozen. Do not push me, she said, I need time. Especially someone who told her, "Yes, jump!" Or: "No, stay, do not jump!"
Two who found each other late - now Michaela May and Bernd Schadewald want to spend as much time together as possible.
Because she, who had always advised her daughters to let everything out, to try everything, did not make the jump. She went to a recycler, to a medium, made a talk therapy. That he did not give up when it became difficult for him to endure her hesitation and wavering for so long makes him the man she loves so much. He conjured up moments of eternity as magic plunged into chaos, magical moments. Who was not ashamed of his feelings, even if he could not be sure of hers. Who, even when they were officially separated, flew to Mallorca for three hours. And when she was playing theater, she gave the gatekeeper in the garage a cardboard Easter egg for her, with a red glass heart in it. She led her blindfolded to the Munich Feldherrenhalle on her 52nd birthday, where an a cappella group sang her favorite song "Black Bird". Who referred to her with all the fibers of his being, with an intensity she did not know before. Yours is my whole heart, no matter what comes. This is possible, even beyond the 50th. "One may fall in love," her therapist finally said the redeeming sentence, "even if you're married." Who does not want to hurt others, injured himself. "
Michaela May and Bernd Schadewald - finally a couple. They stayed in Munich, for her sake, and moved into a furnished two-room apartment. You from a villa in Nymphenburg. Getting used to? They both shake their heads. "We did not need anything," she says. "We felt like two students," he says, "it had something conspiratorial." And Michaela May, who liked to say in previous interviews that a marriage eventually ends up by allowing each one to enjoy their own lives, can not be close enough to being around them now. "Due to our age and the fact that we got to know each other late, we now want to spend as much time as possible together," confirms Bernd Schadewald. A hard-won late happiness, from which they both want to enjoy every moment intensely.He accompanies them to filming around the world, they develop television material, with the boulevard piece "Toutou" they were on tour together.
His heart beats her career brighter than his own, although it sometimes hurts him that he is not performing on German TV as he used to. "I've never been so broad in my professional life as Michaela," he says. "I had a non-quota TV show, but then the air was suddenly thin, I was involved financially in two projects, there were unexpected tax back-payments, I had to file personal bankruptcy But that settles everything now my lawyer. " No, it's not a problem that most bank transfers are signed at the moment. "Our life is spontaneous, free, wonderfully independent," says Michaela May, "if I do not turn, we rent a house in the south." In 2006 they married on the Greek island of Symi, 18 guests, all in white, a long table laid in a bay. Also Alexandra and Lilian, then 22 and 18 years old, were there. Where do you see yourself in ten years ?, I ask the two. "Maybe in the country, that would be nice," says Michaela May, "but the Bernd likes the city better." He says nothing, his face everything. No matter where, it says, the main thing, together. "Of course there's not an a cappella band every night," she says. "But almost," he says.
Michaela May was born in Munich in 1952. As an eleven-year-old she was already in "Uncle Tom's hut" and "Heidi" in front of the camera. After graduation, she trained as a kindergarten teacher. From 1972 she also appeared in the theater. Her breakthrough came in 1974 Michaela May with Helmut Dietl's "Munich G'schichten", later she played in "Monaco Franze" and "Kir Royal". It was followed by appearances in series and thriller series such as "The Old", "Derrick" and "crime scene". In almost 40 years she has starred in more than 200 television films. For her role as Commissioner in "Polizeiruf 110" she received the German Television Award and the Adolf Grimme Prize. Michaela May has two adult daughters. Since 1990 she has been involved with people with the metabolic disease cystic fibrosis. For this she was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit this year.
Bernd Schadewald was born in 1950 in Lübeck. Since his studies at the Westfälische Schauspielschule Bochum and several years as an assistant director, he has been working as a scriptwriter (including "A Case For Two", "Wilsberg") and director ("Tatort" or "Polizeiruf 110") for television. Over the years, Bernd Schadewald has devoted himself more and more to socially critical television play. Bernd Schadewald received the Adolf Grimme Prize for the television films "Der Hammermörder" and "Schickssspiel" and for his film "Angst" the director award of the Akademie der Künste. Nevertheless, he was always drawn to the theater. He staged the "class enemy" and "Clockwork Orange" at the Schauspiel Bonn. He is currently writing a new TV play and is preparing his first feature film.
