In a double pack on celebrity hunt
Blame on everything is Rotkäppchen. More specifically, a Christmas performance in 1941, in a small theater in the Ruhr area. At that time two girls in the audience, five years old, with big eyes and panic in their hearts, because on the stage the wolf wants to eat the Little Red Riding Hood. "That was so compelling for us, we thought the action on stage was real," recalls Christel Tenbuß. "What triggered this play and its actors in us, was probably the foundation for everything that came afterwards."
The Conny, the Jackie, the Senta ...
Arm in arm with the Knef.
What came after that are 90,000 photos of actors and singers, captured with the camera of two twin sisters who spent over 50 years spending their days and nights waiting for great artists - a lifelong passion.
When Margret and Christel Tenbuss talk about encounters with Hildegard Knef, Maria Callas and Jackie Kennedy, you feel the passion that they describe as "inner fire". Then the memories gush out of them and do not want to stop anymore. Every year, the color of every evening gown on any red carpet is at your disposal. But they have never been simple "celebrity hunters". "We admired the stars and were grateful for what they gave us with their playing and their music," says Margret Tenbuss. "Our photos are an expression of our worship."
A worship that is put on hold after the revival experience with Little Red Riding Hood - the second World War sent Margret and Christel to the countryside, survival is the only agenda item. Only when they are back in their hometown Gladbeck and the radio again sends operettas and hits, their passion awakens again. "The radio was our first cultural donor," says Christel. "We all heard them: Bruce Low, Liselotte Malkowsky and Cornelia Froboess, and we loved them very much." The child star becomes the first subject of the sisters. On a Sunday morning, they drive to the hotel in Conny. Armed with her "box," a camera for 9 Mark 90, which her father gave them for Christmas in 1951, they ask the hotel porter for Cornelia Froboess. He likes to give information, "the little one" is riding a scooter in the yard. The first photo is in the box. From then on, the twins will not make a move without their camera. They visit cinema premieres, wait in front of hotels and behind theaters - where they can photograph their stars, they learn from cinema magazines.
Margret (left) and Christel Tenbuss.
At some point, the Ruhr area is no longer enough, in 1955 they travel to Munich for the first time, and for one year they have saved their saleswoman salaries for this holiday. In the evening, they go to the theater, "temple of the muses", as the two call this beautiful old-fashioned, during the day the sisters stand in front of the Bavaria Studios, their "El Dorado", where in the 50s, the great movies and the world stars come and go. They photograph O.W. Fischer, Sir Peter Ustinov, Horst Buchholz and Heinz Rühmann, their archive is growing.
"We have been very persistent," says Margret, laughing. That was indispensable for her hobby. Just like instinct, sensitivity and discipline. "You need to ignore hunger and thirst, and you usually do not have a toilet if you wait for someone for hours."
Skill and diplomacy are not counted on by the sisters, but they both master it well. For example, when they went to Vienna in 1957 to see Vivien Leigh in a Shakespearean performance. Several times they had written the actress to London, this had thanked with letters. These letters show them as a reference at the reception of the Hotel Sacher, where Vivien Leigh resides. "'We know her,' we told the porter," recalls Margret. He calls promptly in the actress' room. Three minutes later, Mrs. Leigh comes down the stairs, "in a blue costume with white cuffs, like an angel," says Christel. "The good Lord could not have been more important to us at this moment."
My beetle smelled three months after Hilde's perfume.
It is this feeling that turns the hobby into a passion. But also the possibility to escape from everyday life. "All of this helped us through gloomy times, as we worked as apprentices for twelve hours a day, there was nothing left but filth," says Margret. Over the years regular correspondence is created with some stars, with some even friendships. Liv Ullmann invites her to Norway to join her family. Ute Lemper always sends pictures of her children. Hildegard Knef baptizes the first car of Christel with a bottle of her sinfully expensive perfume. "After that, my beetle smelled of Hilde for three months," recalls Christel.
In 1962 Margret's passion grew so big that she moved to Munich. "I wanted to swallow more art," she says, "just for a year." The one year will be life-long, regret both Margrets never move, even if they have been missing each other, because Christel follows her sister only thirty years later, in 1992, to Bavaria. In their common holidays, they continue to travel to the stars: In Monte Carlo they run in the morning at five o'clock on stiletto heels the car of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly. In Gstaad they photograph, admittedly secretly, Jackie Onassis in a church while praying. At a film festival, Christel brushes pollen from Catherine Deneuve's dress, with a small brush she happens to have in her pocket, meeting Muhammed Ali, Clint Eastwood, Shirley McLaine, Dustin Hoffman, and Liz Taylor. They present to Queen Silvia some photos that Margret made 20 years earlier at the Olympics, where Silvia worked as a hostess.
At the airport Alfred Hitchcock posed with Margret Tenbuss.
"We've always tried to give the stars something back by sending them our photos, giving them to nannies or gardeners, or even doing banking for them," says Christel. They themselves never wanted to make money with the photos. Over time, her pictures, which she made in 1972 with a Leica, are printed in magazines, on book and album covers, theater posters and autograph cards. Why did not make photography a profession? "We would have had to look for a new hobby and a better one than this we would not have met."
The fact that they themselves have become prominent over the years, appearing on television, have exhibitions and above all that now they get the fan mail makes them proud. Now, at 73, they are slowly beginning to believe that they have created something great, even if that was never their goal: a cultural history in pictures.
The Tenbuss twins rave about Moritz Bleibtreu
Even the fact that they did not start their own families does not hurt them. "We never exclude marriage," says Christel. "But she was not our destiny." And "ranzuschmeißen" to the male stars was never in question. "We finally worshiped them." But they chuckle and admit: "We would not have knocked some off the edge of the bed if the opportunity presented itself." The opportunity for photos they perceive today only in Munich, they are a bit full of so many encounters in recent years already become.
There are still actors who would be worth a Tenbuss photo: "We love Wiebke Puls, Nina Kunzendorf and Moritz Bleibtreu," they say. "But they also come to Munich, we do not have to travel to them." Hollywood and the Academy Awards would have been a dream, of course. But there must also be unfulfilled wishes, the two say. "If you no longer have dreams, then you are like a bird with broken wings."
The Tenbuss twins exhibit
From April 16 to May 21, 2010, a selection of the star photos of the twins will be on display at Galerie Frank Schlag in Essen. Gallery Frank Schlag Meinsenburgstraße 173 45133 Essen Phone: 0201-1807772
