After personal bankruptcy and forced break
This is how pop star Matthias Reim is doing today
Matthias Reim has fought back – financially and in terms of health.
© imago/Gonzales Photo
Matthias Reim has already had to cope with setbacks, both financially and in terms of health. Now he reveals how things are going today.
At the end of 2022, there was great concern for Matthias Reim (65): The hit star had to cancel several concerts for health reasons and undergo intensive medical treatment. The musician is now fit again, but recognizing that his body needs a break has always been difficult for Reim, as he explains in the “Spiegel” interview.
“In the fall I was panicking that everything would be in the media again. According to the motto: He always gets sick when he has to go on stage. I wanted to avoid this impression at all costs,” says the singer. “I’m Matthias Reim, and he won’t go home even with three knives in his back – that’s what I thought.”
“I was on the verge of multiple organ failure”
But then it got serious. “I had caught the flu, I was over it. My doc warned me: If you don’t call stop now, you’ll get the next myocarditis.” In 2015, Reim had to be carried off the stage. “Back then, my pump was still performing at 20 percent, I was on the verge of multiple organ failure,” he recalls.
If he hadn’t taken a break this time, all his subsequent plans would have failed, Reim is certain: “I’ve been on tour again since March, my new single will be out next week, then my live album, in September I’ll play at the end of the tour My concert in Berlin’s Wuhlheide in front of – hopefully – 15,000 spectators. I could have snapped all that if I hadn’t listened to the Doc, today I realize that.”
In addition, it costs hundreds of thousands of euros to postpone an entire tour, Reim emphasized. At the beginning of his career in the 2000s, the singer accumulated a mountain of debt and had to file for personal bankruptcy about ten years after his hit success “Damn, I love you”. “I was once at the top and believed that everything I touch would turn to gold. As if I was intoxicated. That’s why I fell all the lower.”
Matthias Reim can do it with or without money
He has been debt-free since April 2010. “I’m amazed that I kept turning the corner. I was really, really stupid.” His conclusion today is: “I can live wonderfully with a lot of money, but also almost without it. I noticed that when I was insolvent.”