There are no two opinions about the fact that society reporter Michael Graeter is a legend.

About when his 80th birthday is, very much.

Older encyclopedias name July 29, 1943 as the due date, but there are also information on the Internet that he is already 80.

Alexander Graf von Schönburg-Glauchau, on the other hand, recently wrote in his hymn to Graeter in the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that the former “chief conductor of the Bussi-Bussi-Society” will turn 80 this week - and who should know better than him Graf, who has double access as a Society columnist and Society member?

Actually only Graeter himself. But he doesn't answer, again.

Timo Frasch

Political correspondent in Munich.

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It's been two and a half years since I approached Graeter.

It was on Wiener Platz.

He ate a soup, vegetable or fish soup, in any case it wasn't just the best in Munich, but the best in the world, Graeter said after I had introduced myself.

I reminded him of my question, which he had not answered: I would like to write a text about the Munich Society.

Where to go

Who is out, who is in?

Graeter said: These are always the same questions that he is asked;

the world of celebrities has basically not changed, but nobody is writing about it anymore;

everyone only writes about D-celebrities, and the princess's son Anyway, no one even noticed that he had a new wife.

Everything seems to have been better in the past anyway

I said that the D-celebrity stuff was being watched on television, to which he replied that the quotas had been faked, you saw that back then when everyone on the street was talking about "Kir Royal" and still "Die Schwarzwaldklinik" always stood on top. The gossip reporter in Kir Royal was modeled after Graeter, he is convinced of that for good reason, even if the director of the series, Helmut Dietl, claimed otherwise in 2014.

Everything seems to have been better in the past anyway. Graeter was upset at Wiener Platz that an ATM had been installed in one of the houses instead of a flower shop. I said I had just come from Söder, who now cares a lot about flowers and bees, Graeter said: five years too late. I should also write that what is always portrayed as bees in the media are actually wasps. What surprised me most about the sentence: that Graeter apparently believed that I would make a story out of the thin sauce he served me. He should be right. When I almost hit the bill for my soup, the stall manager Graeter asked if he would take care of it, I said “sorry”, he: I could have afforded that. We stayed, I should get in touch next week,then we'll do something at the Viktualienmarkt. After a call and an SMS remained unanswered, so I couldn't find out what exactly we wanted to do at the Viktualienmarkt, he answered the cell phone sometime in the evening, wanted to meet immediately, he couldn't tomorrow, so he went to the theater, possibly on Friday, because he's definitely not going to the Vienna Opera Ball.

Then it didn't work either. So how can you write a reasonable appreciation for your 80th birthday - if he even has it? The best thing to do is call someone who knows him very well, film director Klaus Lemke, also a Munich legend. He is full of praise and tenderness. "Graeter managed to get the Bunte interested in us." Cleo Kretschmer once carried a transparent handbag, and Graeter, who worked for Abendzeitung, Bild and Bunte, simply wrote down everything that was in it. He was obsessed with facts and details that nobody else was interested in. A Munich Tom Wolfe. “I really owe him a lot,” says Lemke. When Graeter calls, he always answers. Which, according to reports, cannot be said about everyone. But Graeter himself can hardly be reached.

An SMS with the question of whether it was actually his birthday this Thursday went unanswered - initially. A photo of his identity card reaches us via dubious channels: July 29, 1941, without a doubt ER. Shortly before, there was even a text message that not only proves that Graeter is alive, but that, despite everything, he still has it: “Time is running out, the Château Pétrus at that age costs 8500 and tastes good, even though the price is right not doing. "