Frank Elstner celebrates his 80th birthday on April 19th. This is how he became one of the greatest entertainers in the German television landscape.
Frank Elstner turns 80 – and German television gives him more presents than almost any other living German.
On Good Friday, illustrious guests such as Anke Engelke (56), Jean-Claude Juncker (67), Barbara Schöneberger (48), Jan Böhmermann (41), Günther Jauch (65), Michelle Hunziker (45) and Thomas Gottschalk (71) paid homage to the veteran of German TV entertainment in “Frank Elstner” – one more question”. SWR, something like Frank Elstner’s home port, broadcast several past programs by the TV presenter from Easter Sunday, including his talk shows and various editions of well-known formats such as ” The Monday Painters” and “Elstner’s Travels”.
Like Frank Elstner “Wetten, dass..?” invented
In view of this flood of expressions of respect, one is a little surprised that ZDF of all things doesn’t do anything similar. After all, it’s about Frank Elstner, who invented the most successful show ever for the Mainz station: “Wetten, dass…?”
The show was a Saturday night street sweeper, with the whole family gathering in front of the television and making Thomas Gottschalk a superstar. Frank Elstner himself moderated “Wetten, dass…?” from 1981 to 1987 39 times. According to his own statements, he developed the concept in two hours during a sleepless night. He pondered why there was no betting on television. Then he sat down at the kitchen table with a bottle of red wine and began to write. When the bottle was empty, the concept for “Wetten, dass…?”
That was in 1981, when he was already an old hand. He was previously announcer, chief announcer and program director of Radio Luxembourg, moderated the European TV show “Spiel ohne Grenzen” and helped ORF boss Gerd Bacher in Vienna to set up the legendary radio station Ö3. On Südwest 3 he presented the game show “Die Montagsmaler”.
The actor’s son moved through the country
Frank Elstner’s real name is Timm Franz Maria Elstner, born in Linz in 1942. The mother, an actress, came from an upper-class Berlin family, the father was Austrian, also an actor and operetta buff. The son moved around the country with his parents, depending on the commitment. The family settled down in Baden-Baden, where Mama Hilde became a spokeswoman for Südwestfunk and Papa Erich managed the operetta stage and also joined radio after her departure.
Little Timm also came to radio, to children’s radio. He has been on hundreds of shows. “Südwestfunk became my second home. And I – along with Volker Lechtenbrink and Andreas von der Menden – one of the busiest radio children in the Federal Republic,” he later wrote in his book “Wetten Fun. My Life, My Guests, My Shows”.
At the age of ten he lent his voice to Bambi in a radio play. Then a gentleman who had come to the studio accompanied by the director patted him on the shoulder and praised him: “You did a great job.” Years later he learned that this gentleman was the writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature Hermann Hesse (1877-1962).
In Luxembourg he laid the foundation for his career
Elstner would have liked to have studied theater studies, but unfortunately that wasn’t possible because he had failed his Abitur. So he applied as a 21-year-old speaker at Radio Luxembourg – and was accepted. Timm also became Frank because another presenter was called Tom and it was decided that “Tim and Tom sounded like Fix and Foxi”, as he told the “mirror”.. So he called himself Frank, that’s the name of his older brother, by the way.
In Luxembourg he laid the foundation for his unique entertainment career – despite the eye condition microphthalmia, which caused him to lose his right eye and get a glass eye at the age of 20. And despite his insane stage fright, which kept him from sleeping on Thursdays when he had to present a Saturday evening show. He believes that his father passed it on to him, who once fainted on stage from stage fright.
After the grandiose “Wetten, dass..?” Elstner moderated shows like “Do you understand fun?” with varying degrees of success. (Das Erste), “People of the Week” (SWR), “Nase in Front” (ZDF), “The Best in the Southwest” (SWR), “The Incredible Quiz of Animals”, “Simply Millionaire” (ARD), “Jeopardy !” (RTL) or “But Hello” (RTL). And in his program “Die stille Stars” (ZDF), Elstner interviewed 138 Nobel Prize winners in 113 episodes, which he still considers his “greatest triumph”. In his shows, as a moderator, it was always about letting his guests shine in the center of attention, he himself was more in the background.
And private?
Frank Elstner is married for the third time and is the father of five children. One daughter is an actress, one son runs a production company in Berlin. Elstner has been a vegetarian for many years and describes himself as fond of animals.
His Baden-Baden think tank “Elstnertainment” continues to develop entertainment media concepts. He himself presented the talk show “Wetten, das war’s ..?” on Netflix, for which he received the junior Bambi in 2021 – two years after the Bambi for life’s work. There he also announced his Parkinson’s disease in 2019.
For eight years he has been suffering from the slowly progressive and incurable loss of nerve cells. He lived healthy for decades, ate healthily, did a lot of sport and did everything for a long life. And then this! “Oops,” he thought, “you’re not on the winning side now.”
“I only ever played Frank Elstner”
In an interview with “Zeit”, Elstner said that he was “not actually made for television”. “I only ever played Frank Elstner. Maybe that made me sick.” He’s just not a 1.85 meter tall blond guy who everyone is chasing after. “I always had to fight,” he added to his friend Markus Lanz (53). “I had to do more than others. I always knew how to work a lot.”
But he is doing relatively well; compared to other patients, he does not have Parkinson’s, but a “little Parkinson’s boy”. He takes medication to stop his tremors, he works out in the gym in the basement of his house, lets off steam on the punching bag and sweats on the rowing machine.
Before his 80th birthday he has “hellish respect”, he told the “mirror”. He has achieved his real goal in life: “to get full”. And the chances are not bad for the second either: “I want to go to heaven.”