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He was born in West Berlin in 1959. As an actor on stage, on television and in the cinema, as well as a dubbing, radio play and audio book speaker, Ulrich Matthes is one of the most famous in his field. His father was the local manager at the “Tagesspiegel”, and after taking on TV roles and dubbing at an early age, he studied German and English for five semesters. Encouraged by an encounter with Martin Held, he took acting lessons. At the theater he played in Krefeld / Mönchengladbach, Düsseldorf, at the Münchner Staatsschauspiel and the Kammerspiele, later in Berlin at the Schaubühne and since 2004 at the Deutsches Theater.

He became known to a wider audience in 2004 in his role as Propaganda Minister Goebbels in the feature film "Der Untergang".

He has been President of the German Film Academy since 2019.

As a passionate reader, he always finds himself exploring how a text can be used, as a reading, dramatization, filming: “Can the dialogues be spoken, is it written on the punch line?

These are technical criteria that I have to deal with on a daily basis. ”And he says of such lists:“ You have to avoid wanting to be original, it is more about honesty. ”Ulrich Matthes explains his biography in books below (protocol: Manuel Brug).

Enid Blyton: Five friends on the rocky island

I learned to read about this good craftswoman.

The titles are of course completely interchangeable, "In the traveling circus" would also work.

I have goosebumps all erect, if I remember the scene where the five grope around with their pinscher in a dark wax museum, in which of course the villain of this world novel lurks, quietly and tightly in armor.

Oh, creeps!

That is the most beautiful thing for a child.

And most of all I shuddered with little Hävelmann: “Shine, good moon, shine.” “Five friends”, this series, cozy and exciting at the same time, I have read twenty or thirty times.

I loved getting stuck in the loop, even as an awakening fan of Englishness.

Thomas Mann: Tonio Kröger

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For my puberty and post-puberty it has to be Thomas Mann.

Let's say "Tonio Kröger", in the turmoil of his longing, or "Buddenbrooks", they have something to do with each other.

Hopefully I've long been beyond the scruffy bourgeoisie that appears in the Blyton books, for example, in England I still think it's beautiful.

But with Mann back then it was also the fight against the bourgeoisie.

Nevertheless, as a fanatical man-reader down to secondary secondary literature, I got so lost that I missed my Abitur German test, which I was allowed to write about man.

Ulrich Matthes has this edition of the stories by Thomas Mann

Source: Manuel Brug

Because I put all the blah blah of the half-digested commentators into it.

And because my great, non-ideologically left-wing German teacher, gifted with natural authority, Mr. Pörksen at the Schmargendorf Gray Monastery - with a Wolf Biermann poster at home on the wall and the same mustache - graciously checked me verbally because of this grade 3.

In my tattered “Magic Mountain”, which I read again in lockdown, I found a lot of touching, also embarrassing fringes of myself: “Bravo!” “Wonderful!” Only “Keep it up” was missing.

In the meantime I read Thomas Mann with more distance.

Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio

An insider tip.

One of the few books I've read twice because I absolutely love it.

It is about the inhabitants of a small town, it describes them with the greatest possible magical realism.

I have seldom read anything that touches me so much.

The individual chapters each deal with a character, a pharmacist, a doctor, a teacher, supposedly simple people, whose fates are all interwoven.

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It reads incredibly melancholy and vital at the same time.

It's on the front of my bookcase with the beautiful front page.

And when I'm bored, I read one of these miniatures, usually even more.

This book has grown dear to my heart, I came across it through a newspaper review and wish millions of readers this unfortunately not very well-known work!

Incidentally, it was translated by one of the greats - Eike Schönfeld.

Very important!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Karamazov brothers

After Thomas Mann's small, flaring campfire, of course I had to end up in Dostoyevsky's raging purgatory at some point.

I love all of his novels, but first and foremost.

They challenged me the most, tossed me back and forth when I was reading them in my mid-thirties.

That's probably the best age for it, you're not quite as dumb as when you were twenty.

Thick classics, preferably in the thin print edition

Source: Manuel Brug

I also plowed my way through Tolstoy, dear Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons", Pushkin, Gogol.

But for me Dostoevsky is miles beyond that.

Metaphorically speaking, I tore half the page out when turning the pages because I was so excited.

It would have to be filmed better than with Yul Brynner and Maria Schell.

Why didn't Stanley Kubrick do that?

It would also be something - because of the religious as well as the claim - and I shot it myself, for Terrence Malick.

Wolfgang Herrndorf: Tschick

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Absolutely.

It is probably the only book that I read almost completely in one night.

The publisher Alexander Fest gave it to me after an evening invitation as a fresh text by an author whom I barely knew by name.

I read the first 20 pages at home at midnight and found it so funny, touching, inspiring, jumping at me that I read on until my eyes closed at four o'clock.

I was through with two-thirds.

The very next day I shared my enthusiasm with Fest - and also with Ulrich Khuon, my artistic director, that I wanted to do a reading in the Deutsches Theater with it as soon as possible.

Wolfgang Herrndorf was happy, but was unable to come because of his illness.

I still think today that “Tom Sawyer” and “Tschick” are on the same level.

It affects people between 14 and 114. You have to manage to reach heart and intellect equally.

I am really very sad that Herrndorf died so early and was not able to write ten more books.

Robert Walser: The assistant

This wonderful, enigmatic person is also one of those authors whom I admire rather quietly - in contrast, for example, to my passionate Dostoevsky love.

When I was in my early twenties, I came across him by chance.

Later I was in the country, in a homestead, performing miniatures on a warm summer afternoon and there was music to go with it.

Strange observations of nature or of being human were only minute-long.

I associate the mood of this reading with him, this later mentally deranged, to whom my heart is very attached.

After all, he died in the snow.

That fits in a sad way with this crazy life.

His prose is so peculiar and strange.

No wonder that Kafka was also a great Walser admirer.

It's like the monumental brother of this quiet, little, unfortunately not so world-famous author.

Vladimir Nabokov: Pnin

For me, Nabokov is one of those universes that I deal with again and again, just like Kleist or Kafka.

Some of Nabokov's reads like butter, others require plowing.

But that doesn't bother me while reading.

With “Die Gabe” I really fought my way through with the greatest pleasure and nevertheless I can recommend the book.

“Despair” reads like a thriller.

“Lolita” is fantastic, but “Pnin” is his masterpiece, so hilarious!

It's about a Russian who is transferred to a small-town university and has to deal with the way of life, the language and everything else possible - just crazy funny and intelligent.

And never pretentious.

I bow to this book with an amused smile.

Franz Kafka: The castle

First of all I would like to praise Reiner Stach, of whose fantastic three-volume Kafka biography I have shamefully read only two parts.

They are almost as good as Kafka himself. Perhaps a bit surprising: I particularly enjoy Kafka's humor.

The prejudice of many that everything is just gray, uniform, with faceless men in Mao suits locking you in the broom closet is complete nonsense.

I smile every fourth sentence - because he's watching so closely.

By the way, everyone had to laugh a lot at his own readings in his circle of friends.

More than almost any other author, Kafka forces me to have a special kind of concentration.

A bright one that won't let my head smoke.

Imre Kertész: A Fateless Novel

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There has to be a book about the Shoah, because that has been a life theme for me since I was 13 years old when my parents read “The Diary of Anne Frank”. At that time my - still childish - political consciousness was awakened. I have dealt with fictional and documentary Holocaust literature over and over again. As an actor, I particularly try to stimulate a sense of responsibility in my audience on this topic.

Since I was able to get to know the author, the most personal thing that connects me to the Shoah literature is this book by the kind, affectionate, warm-hearted Imre Kertész.

Together with Kertész, I recorded this story of a young man who contrasts Auschwitz with life and his vitality as an audio book.

Beyond the autobiographical, the book reaches a lonely height - parabolic, individual, generalistic.

It's close to me and at the same time very great art.

Anton Chekhov: The duel

This is my dear God! This makes my heart warm. I've played it a lot and I want to play it a lot more often. Photos from seven different ages are hanging over my television. So if I get lost with Markus Lanz, then I always know: there is something else! Chekhov can be consulted like the “little family friend” in all situations as a plaster, aspirin, orange juice.

Everything that can be found in his plays and short stories is represented in “Das Duell”: love and distance to people and their being. It doesn't matter if you live in 2016 before or in 2021 after Christ. They remain in their essential characteristics, aberrations, longings, digressions, and peculiarities the same as they were, are and will be. Doctor Chekhov's smiling look at his characters is so clever, funny and moving that I will never be finished with it. The relationship with him has not changed for decades. Because - like Kafka - he is completely timeless and ageless. Of the ten authors named here, he is really my brother Toni.