Nice brittle: The actress Corinna Harfouch
An hour before our appointment in Berlin Corinna Harfouch calls me on the phone and says the interview. She did not want to talk about her life, much less about her private life. She would turn her car around again, she says energetically. I listen to her, stand at the station Friedrichstrasse, around me people bustle. The suburban train to Pankow, where we wanted to meet for lunch, rattles loudly. And without rattling loudly. What now?
I have to think of Odysseus, the hero of the poet Homer. He is stranded again and again, has overcome numerous obstacles. And finally arrive at his destination. "Ulysses" is based on Homer's famous novel by the Irish author James Joyce, which now appears in a brilliant radio play version. Corinna Harfouch speaks several roles in it: a narrator, a barmaid and a nut.
A wonderful conversation piece, I say to her as the next S-Bahn enters. Maybe that's the key. I feel the actress wavering. Then she adds: If I'm even prepared? I wonder if I should get the "Ulysses" out of my bag on the noisy station Friedrichstraße and shout the first sentence into my cell phone. Almost as an entry ticket. "Handsome and fat, Buck Mulligan appeared at the foot of the stairs, a basin of soap in his hands, with a mirror and a razor crossed over it ..." I'll leave it. Then Harfouch says, quite unexpectedly: She would do it, but only together with the director of the radio play, Klaus Buhlert. We're going to see him, she says.
One hour later we are in the production studio of Buhlert in Prenzlauer Berg. After Harfouch invited me to her car in Pankow and then bought in a café mountains of cakes and croissants for us. Could be that we have now arrived at the destination. She builds a small bridge for me: she's usually suspicious, she says, I've already noticed that.
Corinna Harfouch is one of the most sought after actresses in Germany, her versatility is repeatedly praised. That she does not staged her rather austere beauty, but brings it over very casually, without eye-catching make-up, makes her particularly attractive. Everything that looks like media hype is alien to her, she avoids talk shows. Playing, she once said, is a "survival matter" to her. And elsewhere: "The way I play it would basically be secret playing." It's probably what the unpredictable is constantly rubbing off on: the work she loves so much is bound to be open to the public.
The actress laughs. Beguiling, frivolous, silly, provocative, boisterous. An incredible laugh, it comes from some depths, maybe directly from hell. The laughter is an excerpt from the 11th chapter of the "Ulysses", Buhlert lets us listen to the production - a mammoth project with a total duration of 22 hours. Joyce describes only a single day in his novel, June 16, 1904. The author leads us through Dublin and, among other things, tells us about the odyssey of the advertising apprentice Leopold Bloom. A book that, due to its constantly changing language levels, is considered almost unreadable, a stylistic labyrinth and a modern classic. In the 11th chapter entitled "Sirens" Harfouch mimics a barmaid. A woman who seduces the men with alcohol, their neckline and their laughter. To get as much money out of them as possible. A modern siren. How do you manage to laugh at commanding so inconceivably provocative? Harfouch looks at me a little mockingly. Every time I ask her something, I'm scared to ruin it with her. That she jumps up and says: That's it. If she answers, it's like receiving a special favor from her. Corinna Harfouch does not jump up. She says, "The main job of an actor is to be in a good mood with his work, which I have to bring to the studio as well as my textbook, and I need a clear mind, and then laugh." I say that I like the sensuality of the new "Ulysses" production. Together with the musical accompaniment. Harfouch replies that she does not like the word underpainting.
Much has been written about Corinna Harfouch's fragile or even mysterious aura. Without that the secret was taken away. In her repertoire, there are a number of roles in which she is rather strict. In Caroline Links "In the Winter a Year" (2008), Harfouch plays a mother who has to cope with the suicide of her son and comes up with the absurd idea to have a painting of her two children made - the surviving daughter should model, for the Son must be brought pictures and videos. In Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Der Untergang" (2004) Harfouch plays Magda Goebbels, a woman of spooky brutality who kills her six children at the end of the Nazi era. "I've found that I can not play passive roles, I'm the perpetrator," Corinna Harfouch once said in an interview.
"I also have no moral concerns about any role." As for the "Ulysses", she had a lot of fun, says the actress."I knew this was going to be a big adventure, quite exhausting, a very artistic thing that requires a lot of concentration, as if you were meditating, the happiest moments for me are always those in which I dive into a project. where I'm done and look: how does that work, how does that sell itself? I find it more satisfying to drill deeper than to constantly widen. "
She says she has enjoyed a longer period of calm in the past few months. The actress lives in Brandenburg, in a house in the country, loves her garden and still wants to learn a lot about biodynamic gardening. On the property is an old GDR trailer, which she converts to a work space, without a telephone. "There was some noise in the conversion, I saw a squirrel catching his three boys, one after the other in his mouth and carrying him to a new nest, squirrels always building two nests: that's them If I see something like this, the miracle will be revealed to me. " It makes them happy, says Corinna Harfouch, to observe nature, to understand. Earlier, when she lived in the city, caring for her engagements and her children, there was always a lot going on. "I do not ask myself today anymore: How should I live, how do I find myself, I know that very well, as you get older, you do not live by yourself, that's a very good feeling."
Suddenly she jumps up, shouts: "Arrrggghhh." She did not really want to tell this nonsense, such a woman's rant. I'll try again: are not these still the questions that keep us going, even if they sound a bit like life coaching and counseling? Corinna Harfouch fights off. She is not in shape today, has no need for these questions. Dear, she would now like to hear something from the "Ulysses".
I ask her how it feels when she sits in her house in Brandenburg and reads the "Ulysses", dives into the streets and nightclubs of Dublin. Harfouch says she can not answer the question. "As a reading person, you dive into the worlds of books, no matter where you are, I can read anywhere, even when it's loud around me, I've always read a lot, even as a kid, that's a wonderful thing Reason to be in a world of its own, which is often much more interesting than what you experience around you, I'm sure I'm crazy. " She tells of the books she is reading - for example, a volume of essays by Christa Wolf. Even now, in narration, she is completely immersed in the worlds of books and is glad that she does not have to talk about herself any further.
Five minutes, she says abruptly. Then she has an appointment. I think about a meaningful and at the same time harmless final question. And carelessly ask her about her two grandchildren. Hit, sunk. That's it. Harfouch says goodbye, it's very fast. The curtain falls.
Corinna Harfouch was born in Thuringia in 1954 and grew up in Saxony. She studied at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. After the fall of the Berlin Wall she became a sought-after actress in film, television and on stage in the West. She excelled for example in Hark Bohm's "Vera Brühne" (2001) and in various TV thrillers ("Tatort", "Eva Blond") and got numerous awards. The actress was married twice, in second marriage to director Michael Gwisdek, and has three children.
The audiobook James Joyce: "Ulysses". Speakers: Corinna Harfouch, Dietmar Bär, Rufus Beck u. a. Radio drama editing, music and direction: Klaus Buhlert. 24 CDs or 4 MP3-CDs, running time approx. 1800 minutes, 99,99 / 79,99 Euro, SWR / der Hörverlag. The entire radio play will be broadcast on so-called "Bloomsday", 16 June, from 8 am on Südwestrundfunk.
