From Swabia to the red carpet

He bursts into the make-up suite waving Brezels. “I hope there will be enough to go round!” He’s been down to a Swabian bakery. “They told me they wouldn’t be opening until ten, but I was there at nine and they let me in.” A Swabian bakery in Berlin! The Swabians, I should add, come from Germany’s far away south-west, the area around Stuttgart. It’s the region where Dieter Kosslick spent his childhood (much of it, we discover, hanging around in a very atmospheric local bakery). Since then, he’s come far: these days he’s the director of the Berlin Film Festival. And he’s my latest guest on Talking Germany.

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It was of course fascinating to hear what the director of one of the world’s leading film festivals would choose as his FMOAT. And it was a movie from his childhood: the magnificent 1959 historical epic Ben-Hur. The film won eleven Oscars. But it also contained what might be one of the most famous bloopers of all time: in the legendary chariot race, one of Ben-Hur’s enemies can apparently be seen to be wearing a wrist-watch as he falls from his chariot!

78 going on 17

He disappeared from home when he was still a tiny boy. He survived the war. Then he got into snake charming. And that was all before the serious adventures began. So just how old was he when he departed on that first expedition? “I think I was three or four. People can’t quite agree. All I wanted to do was to visit my grandmother on the other side of town.” It’s Rüdiger Nehberg speaking: adventurer and activist – and my latest guest on Talking Germany.

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Rüdiger Nehberg is man who has plied the oceans. He’s at home in the deepest, densest jungle. But he loves the desert. And his choice as his FMOAT is Lawrence of Arabia. It’s a fantastic film, and I must admit that I think director David Lean is one of the greats. Interesting book, too: Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence.

Or: living in two worlds

I like interfaces.” Well, that’s an understatement. It comes from Stefan Willich. He’s a remarkable man, who’s been very successful in two different fields: medicine and music. And he’s managed to draw his two passions together with the creation of the World Doctors Orchestra. “I find it productive to bring things together,” he says, with another display of understatement. Would he call himself an idealist? “No, no,” he protests, “I’m a hard-nosed realist, who likes developing things that are new.”

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