Michael Mittemeier
Comedian about heavy blows of fate
Michael Mittermeier, here at an older performance, is currently on stage with the program “#13”.
© imago images/Future Image
In his program, Michael Mittermeier tells that he and his wife have lost four children. He wanted to “banish the darkness”.
Michael Mittermeier, 57, and his wife Gudrun Allwang, 53, have had to cope with four serious blows of fate in recent years. as he did on July 7th on the “NDR Talk Show” with Barbara Schöneberger, 49, and Hubertus Meyer-Burckhardt, 66. The comedian talks about the couple losing four children in his new program “#13”.
“We had four stillbirths, my wife and I,” says Mittermeier. Nobody knew that before, “I never talked about it either”. It is a difficult topic, but one that has been with him for a long time. Sometimes people asked him now: “Do you have to bring dead children on stage?” He then says: “Yes, I had it with me every day. 2005 was the first one. I always had it with me.”
It took almost ten years, “that you always get this crazy high and then you get the unbelievable low again. It’s so blatant. And you’re so angry, you’re powerless.” At that time he went to the hospital with a cap, sunglasses and a hoodie “so that nobody would recognize me”.
“Humor and tragedy are so close together”
In 2012, Mittermeier saw another comedian in Scotland who did “a really blatant number” on the subject. He had to laugh and realized: “That’s what I do. I go on stage with humor to drive out the darkness. That’s my job.”
“The great thing is that people are going along with us,” says Mittermeier. He leads her into a low, from which he brings her out again. Two minutes later people would laugh “and so would I. And I don’t have to fake it. Because humor and tragedy are so close together.” He sees that many people in the audience are also affected. But the subject is never discussed. Especially not with men who supposedly had “no connection”. “Yes,” says the 57-year-old. “From the first moment it was my child and our child.”
Mittermeier has been with Allwang for more than 30 years, has been married to her since 1998 and their daughter Lilly was born in 2008. “My wife was there after the program was finished,” says Mittermeier. “She hugged me. And my daughter was there too, as I said, she’s 15 now. And she said: ‘You did a great job. […] It’s probably the best program you’ve ever made.'” In this context there is probably no greater compliment for Mittermeier.