Vadim Glowna:The face of the stumbling and anti-heroes

Vadim Glowna has appeared in over 160 film and TV productions. Born in Eutin, he worked with Yves Montand, Romy Schneider and Sam Peckinpah. The actor and director would have turned 80 on September 26, 2021.

by Stefanie Grossmann

"Derrick", "Der Alte" or "Tatort":The majority of television viewers know Vadim Glowna as a villain on duty from numerous television crime thrillers. The actor does not like this term. And it doesn't do justice to the character actor with the throaty, slightly hoarse voice either. "The stumbling people that I play are usually simply not strong enough to hold themselves up," Glowna once said about himself. They are outsiders and anti-heroes, in whose roles he likes to slip:"They embody what is left of freedom." , he says.

Childhood and youth in St. Pauli

Glowna, who was born in Eutin on September 26, 1941, felt a great urge for freedom from an early age. He comes from "the poorest of backgrounds," he says later in his biography "The Storyteller." As a boy, he immersed himself in stories from an early age. He sits on a sled in the kitchen and fights his way through thick stacks of books. Because family life is not caring. His mother runs a flower shop. His stepfather, who came from Poland and whose name is Glowna, initially went to sea, later he worked as a pilot for Lufthansa. After his parents separated, young Glowna grew up as a latchkey child not far from Hamburg's Reeperbahn in the post-war years. The milieu in St. Pauli has shaped him from an early age, he breaks out early and often stays away from home for days without leaving a message. "I knew Germany's most famous whore Domenica very, very young," he says.

Glowna's trademark is a legacy of his youth

In a fight he breaks his nose, which later becomes one of his trademarks. Eventually Glowna has to go to a Protestant boarding school on the Baltic Sea, but he throws out both school and his theology studies and finally a commercial apprenticeship.

Desire to act develops in France

Glowna hitchhikes to Paris with the aim of attending Marcel Marceau's pantomime school. All he leaves is a note for his parents:"Don't look for me, I'll get in touch." He quickly ran out of money in the city on the Seine. For a while he lives like a clochard - on the street, under bridges or in a disused metro car. In search of food, he breaks into holiday homes and always leaves a note with a "Merci", as he later asserts in his memoirs. He leaves restaurants without paying. When he found a book about theater on the beach in France, he decided to become an actor and not a pantomime.

I read that and it says right on the first page 'In the beginning was the word'. And then I thought 'shit, that's it'. No pantomime, it has to be theater. From an obituary on Deutschlandfunk

Gründgens brings Glowna into the theater ensemble

Back in Hamburg, Glowna initially makes ends meet as a taxi driver and bellhop. As an extra at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus in 1961, he made a good impression on General Manager Gustav Gründgens, who promptly promoted him from his extra to a speaking role in his famous production of "Faust II". He's not even 20 years old then. It is the beginning of Glowna's stage career. Because just three months after starting acting training, he became a member of the ensemble under Gründgens. This is followed by positions at the Theater Bremen under director Kurt Hübner - there Glowna plays with great actors such as Bruno Ganz or Edith Clever under the direction of Peter Zadek. He describes him as an angry young man who sometimes smashes a chair on stage.

Married to fellow actress Vera Chechowa

Glowna's rise in the film and television industry is just as fast as his rise in the theater. The actor made his TV debut in 1964 in Johannes Schaaf's crime film "Im Schatten der Großstadt". Three years later he slips into a criminal's "penitentiary" - the film then shows everyday life behind prison walls. In 1968 he played in the romantic comedy "Love and so on" alongside Vera Chekhova, whom he had married a year earlier. She brings her son Nikolaus into the marriage, whom Glowna adopts. In 1970 he can be seen in Helga Feddersen's NDR television play "Gezeiten".

Glowna plays in Peckinpah's "Steiner - The Iron Cross"

In his early 30s, the actor has already achieved a lot - and a first crisis of meaning. "I thought I had to do something completely different. I'm going to be a farmer, I put something in the ground, water it, and when it's grown, I pick it off and eat it up," says Glowna in an interview with " World". He buys a farm in Austria with his wife. The hiatus lasted a year – then US director Sam Peckinpah knocked on his door. Glowna takes on a role as a Wehrmacht soldier in his film "Steiner - The Iron Cross" from 1976/77. In the same year he can be seen alongside Yves Montand in the French film "Police Python 357". The following year he is the film partner of "Romy Schneider" in "Gruppenbild mit Dame" based on the novel by Heinrich Böll.

Golden Palm for the debut work "Desperado City"

It's also Peckinpah who encourages him to direct. And so Glowna made his first film in Hamburg in the early 1980s:"Desperado City" is about his childhood dreams of a life far away from the neighborhood in St. Pauli. Of America and the Wild West. But the film looks different from reality. Glowna depicts a world of dirt and misery, at the end of which all three protagonists are dead. What Glowna "threw onto the screen" was "impressive and strong", judged the German critics, can be read in the "FAZ". The sad ballad of the big city ran in 1981 in the side program of the Cannes Film Festival - and was awarded the Golden Palm for the best first work. It's Glowna's breakthrough as a director and screenwriter.

Award for Best Actor in "The Untouchables"

In order to be able to direct cinema films such as "The Rigorous Life" or "House of the Sleeping Beauty", Glowna takes on crime roles in "The Old Man" or "Siska". With the fees he pays for the expensive productions. But again and again he shines in big films. For the role of Bruno in Oskar Roehler's film "The Untouchables" with Hannelore Elsner, he received the German Film Critics' Award for Best Actor in 2000. Glowna's last appearances included the ZDF multi-part series "Borgia" and the ARD series "Bloch". Glowna did not live to see the episode "The Stranger" broadcast:on January 24, 2012, the actor died in a Berlin hospital as a result of diabetes.

Overall, Glowna can be seen in more than 160 film and television productions throughout his life. Not only the villains are remembered, but his broken characters, anti-heroes and anti-dads, which the actor filled with his sad look. A film critic once described his charisma aptly and poetically:In his eyes, it's always November.