How good that the actor Jens Harzer just had two of his rare television appearances. So you can explain to people who do not go to the theater - and most of them are - who is the one who has been awarded the Iffland-Ring as the "most important and most worthy performer of German-speaking theater": Harzer is the one , who in the second season of "Babylon Berlin" plays the mysterious hypnotic doctor who was disfigured during the war. And in the last "Tatortreiniger" episode the grandiose oily gatekeeper to hell.

The Iffland-Ring is a traditional and personal award. But in her rules she is cruel: to receive her, the previous wearer of the ring must die. The actor Bruno Ganz, who owned the diamond-studded jewel for more than 20 years, died in February. On Friday, two days after the Zurich funeral service for Ganz, it was announced who he had chosen as his successor in the will: Jens Harzer, 47, ensemble member of the Hamburg Thalia Theater.

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Photo gallery: Jens Harzer receives the Iffland-Ring

In Harzer this must have triggered a sense of chaos - for him, the Swiss actor was an artistic father figure. It was Harzer who read the funeral oration on Ganz in Zurich because the author Botho Strauss could not keep it himself. Thus, the new Iffland-Ring-Träger asked in the first statement for understanding that he initially wanted to do nothing else, "as Bruno Ganz thinking go on the stage and play theater."

Federal Chancellery / DPA

The Iffland ring with a handwritten by Bruno Ganz letter, which determines Jens Harzer as his successor

Resembling his role model, Harzer is reluctant to be in the limelight as a private individual. On the other hand, he has been one of the most eye-catching and unusual actors in German-speaking countries for more than 20 years. Like Ganz, he is not a berserker. It always applies, he once said, to overcome the shame and shyness before the performance.

But then comes at Harzer the transformation. He speaks of "risk" and "mystery" when he delves into the other world where other rules of time, language and relationships apply. Sometimes one thinks he is reluctant to look at the final applause, to leave this world again.

The language is Harzer important than most other actors of his generation. He tugs at the words, he challenges them, stretches, sings, celebrates them. His confrontation with the text does not stop when he masters his part, one can watch him while thinking through and penetrating the words on the stage when he speaks to her with his high voice, sometimes close to tipping.

Some call it mannered, but hardly anyone denies that it creates an unusual presence. His half-hour monologue as a mean of the "Brothers Karamazov" (2013 at the Thalia Theater, directed by Luk Perceval) was just one of many legendary force acts of this kind.

Comedy and lightness that breaks your heart

Harzer's characters - from Ibsen's Peer Gynt to Schiller's Marquis Posa and Büchner's Woyzeck to Peter Handke's narrator character in "Still Still Storm" - are usually of a basic friendliness in appearance, which is not to be confused with harmlessness. Harzer usually plays outsiders, who view the action with a far superior demonstrating distance.

Nobody can smile as crookedly ironically as Harzer under grubby hair. And nobody can make the loneliness of such figures so physically tangible. Unforgettable monologue as a melancholy doctor Astrow in Jürgen Gosch's "Uncle Wanja" staging of 2008, which is still played at the Deutsches Theater Berlin: Since he gives his bored, unattainable for him love a lecture on the future of the Russian forests - and everyone hears his voice, sees in his gestures that it is really about something else. Of course not the woman. Despite all the tragedy, this has a comedy and a lightness that tears one's heart.

Samples "with a beating heart"

Berlin was only a stopover for Harzer. Trained at the Falckenberg School in Munich, he joined the Münchner Kammerspiele as a drama student - and in 1996 played the role of Telemach in Botho Strauß 'play "Ithaka".

His father Odysseus was none other than Bruno Ganz. In 2001, Ganz had received the Berlin Theater Prize, Harzer gave the eulogy. And told about the meeting in Munich; how he was able to observe, record, study, pursue, "questioningly and shyly try to speak" during the rehearsals "with a beating heart, silently hidden, yet beside him on the stage". For him, "a whole new era of playing, speaking, walking and thinking on stage" has begun. Later, both hugged each other with tears in their eyes.

Harzer stayed in Munich for a long time with director Dieter Dorn, first at the Kammerspiele, then at the Residenztheater. In 2009 he went to the Hamburg Thalia Theater, where he is still today. After he had disappeared from the stage for several months in 2017 because of an illness, he returned powerfully: In his eulogy to the young colleague Steffen Siegmund at the Boy Gobert Award he demanded from the city theaters, the number of premieres and events not to further increase and focus on what the theater is all about: playing. It takes time, serenity, freedom from anxiety. Longer sample times.

An outcry, not presented as a scream, but with an urgency that showed that the most important connection between the characters of Jens Harzer and his person in their originality, autonomy and stubbornness.

And now? Continue playing Jens Harzer. At the end of March, Achill again accompanied by "Penthesilea" Sandra Hüller, a Kleist staging by Johan Simons at the Thalia Theater, focused entirely on the two stars. And then again Kleist: the "Amphitryon", a complicated and comical confusion game, directed by Leander Haußmann. Amphitryon's wife Alkmene is played by Marina Galic, who is also Harzer's wife in "normal" life. But the Iffland Award winner does not like to talk about that. "When actors start talking about their private lives," he said in an interview with KulturSPIEGEL, "I'll switch off." I think it's vain. "

Where Jens Harzer can be seen:

"The Crime Scene Cleaner: 31" (Season 7, Episode 4). among others at Netflix and Amazon.
"Babylon Berlin" (season 2). On Amazon and iTunes.

In the theatre:

"Penthesilea" Next performances on 30. and 31.3. in the Thalia Theater Hamburg, further performances in May and June.
"Penthesilea" at the Schauspielhaus Bochum on 24.3. (sold out) as well as 16 and 20.4.
"Cyrano de Bergerac" Next performance on 1.4. at the Thalia Theater Hamburg
"Uncle Wanja" Next performance on 21.4. at the Deutsches Theater Berlin (sold out)
"Fountainhead" Next performances on 27.4. and 4.5. and in June at the Thalia Theater Hamburg
"Amphitryon" Premiere on 11.5. at the Thalia Theater. Further performances on the 12th, 18th and 19.5. and in June