Mourning for actor and cult presenter Hermes Phettberg

Hermes Phettberg, real name Josef Fenz, was considered a versatile performance artist who often put his finger in the wound. He became known to a wide audience in the mid-nineties when he hosted his “Nette Leit Show” on ORF. With the TV format, Phettberg established himself as a cult figure throughout Austria. A total of 19 episodes were broadcast. On the show he welcomed astrologer Gerda Rogers, cabaret artist Josef Hader and football player and coach Didi Constantini, who also died on Wednesday night. In 1996, together with Kurt Palm, he published the book “Frucade or Eggnog” with interviews and monologues from the show.

From the beginning of the 90s he played various roles in the theater group “Sparverein Die Unz-Erstieglichen” around Kurt Palm. Phettberg has been writing his weekly “Falter” column since 1992. A collection of the “Falter” columns appeared as a facsimile of the typescripts under the title “Hundred Hens. Catecheses 1992 – 2003”. In 2003 and 2004, ATV broadcast the program “Beichtphater Phettberg”.

Public bondage action

Phettberg received the Franz Grillparzer Prize of the “Anonymous Actionists” in 1993 and the City of Vienna Prize for Journalism in 2002. The then city councilor for culture, Andreas Mailath-Pokorny (SPÖ), called Phettberg a “radical and subjective observer of everyday life in Vienna,” and he wrote cultural history with his “Nette Leit Show.” In 2007, his old friend and explorer Kurt Palm dedicated the documentary “Hermes Phettberg, Elender” to him, in which the two of them review the life of the former colorful Viennese scene figure in a dialogue.

He caused a stir in 2012 with “Garden of Earthly Delights”, a public bondage campaign as part of the “Wienwoche”, and in the same year the artist book “Alles Schreckliche!” was published by Sensationsverlag. Selected texts”. When Sobo Swobodnik’s black-and-white documentary “The Pope is not a Jeansboy” about Phettberg’s everyday life, which was awarded the 2012 Max Ophüls Prize in 2013, was shown on 28 evenings in the Vienna city cinema, the protagonist attended every single screening despite his mobility impairment .

Walter Fröhlich made a graphic novel from the entries in his “gestion log” from that time: “Blue Jeans” was published in 2015. The Phettberg Comic” outside the book market, financed through a crowdfunding campaign. Also in 2015, Phettberg starred in the feature film “A Perception” by German director Daniel Pfander.

After several strokes, Phettberg, who described himself as a “wretch,” lived in seclusion. He also needed help in everyday life, due to the impairment of fine motor skills and language skills, even when writing.

Phettberg struggled with health problems – the picture is from 2015.

In recent years he has still been present in pop culture, with Phettberg being hired for music videos by young music acts such as Drangsal, Fäuulnis and Nancy Transit. “Young bands seem to like me,” he wondered at the time.