Peter Alexander
What is left of the show icon?
The great entertainer Peter Alexander died ten years ago.
© imago / CHROMORANGE
Peter Alexander died on February 12, 2011 at the age of 84. What remains of the great entertainer ten years after his death?
His name is legend. Peter Alexander (1926-2011) is the pillar saint of German-speaking entertainment culture, a monument to the light muse. The singer Caterina Valente (90), an internationally renowned great, once said someone who would have made his way in the USA if he had only wanted to.
The singer, actor and TV show star, who was actually called Peter Alexander Ferdinand Maximilian Neumayer, was the Germans' favorite entertainer in his 60-year, completely scandal-free career. He has appeared in over 40 films, presented full-length shows on television (with up to 38 million viewers in Germany alone) and was the only German-speaking singer with his hits in the German charts for six decades. Nobody could imitate him.
Many strokes of fate
The charming star from Vienna with the funny, slightly melancholy-looking eyes had completely withdrawn to his Viennese house in the last ten years before his death and died there on February 12, 2011 at the age of 84. Before that, his wife and manager Hilde Haagen (1922-2003) and his daughter, the painter Susanne Haidinger-Neumayer (1958-2009), had died.
The tragedy that befell him during his final years continued after his death. Two years ago Michael Neumayer (1963-2019), the son of Peter Alexander, died in Turkey, where he last lived with his partner in Belek on the Turkish Mediterranean coast. He was only 56 years old.
Until his death he lived in his "little Schönbrunn"
A year before the death of Peter Alexander's son, the family property in Vienna's noble suburb of Grinzing, a famous wine-growing community, was razed to the ground. Peter Alexander had loved the outwardly inconspicuous, 300 square meter villa above all. It was his retreat from the show stage. Until his death he lived in his "little Schönbrunn", as he called the property in Paul-Ehrlich-Gasse.
His son Michael had sold the house to a businessman in 2015. The new owner had the villa demolished on June 8, 2018 in order to build a residential complex. "The 1500 square meter property is like a battlefield," complained the "Kronen" newspaper at the time. The demolition was done at the last minute, because in July 2018 a new amendment to Vienna's building regulations came into force, which would have provided for an examination of the villa's worth of preservation …
He was a model railroad fan
In his "little Schönbrunn", Peter Alexander often played with his model railroad when he was old. It wasn't a huge facility, with an area of 2.1m by 1.1m a rather small but fine world that the hit king had put together himself in 200 hours of work. A picturesque village surrounded by mountains, wilderness, a castle and bridges.
The Peter-Alexander-Platz in Grinzing was named after the entertainer, on which the Alte Presshaus, a historic winegrower's farm, is located, which the state of Namibia has bought and expanded into an ambassador's residence.
The final resting place of the Neumayer family is also in Grinzing. In 2019, after the death of Michael Neumayer, the family of the famous Peter Alexander was completely reunited in the common grave at the Grinzinger Friedhof (group 7, row 1, number 2). Alexander will forever be remembered as the greatest entertainer in German-speaking countries.