Karl Valentin

Karl Valentin was born on June 4, 1882 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany as Valentin Ludwig Fey.

After the school he learnt the trade of a joiner from 1897.

He already met his future wife Gisela Royes in 1899 who worked as a maid servant in the house of the Fey and they lived together as a couple.

In 1902, he began his comic career, enrolling for three months at a variety school in Munich, under the guidance of Hermann Strebel. His first job as a performer was at the Zeughaus in Nürnberg (Nuremberg).

In the wake of his father's death Valentin took a three-year break from performing during which he constructed his own twenty-piece one-man band (with which he eventually toured in 1906). Valentin also took musical studies, learning the guitar with Heinrich Albert.

His real career began in 1908 when he had first successes as a comedian at the "Frankfurter Hof". There he also met Liesl Karlstadt who became his stage partner in 1911. With her he has an enormous success at the "Simplicissimus".

In 1911 Karl Valentin got married with his long-standing friend Gisela Royes, at that time they already had two children.

Karl Valentin had his great breakthrough as a comedian on the screen in 1912. His first movie was "Karl Valentins Hochzeit" and was a great success. In 1914 followed "Der neue Schreibtisch", but he laid the foundations of his legendary repute with countless appearances for cabarets where he enraptured the audience to enthusiasm.

In the 1920s and 1930s, he became Germany's most popular comedian and cabaret artist, often collaborating with Liesl Karlstadt.

In 1922, Bertolt Brecht, had appeared with Valentin and Karlstadt in a photo of Valentin's spoof of Munich's Oktoberfest.Brecht regularly watched Valentin perform his cabaret routines in Munich's beer-halls, and compared him to Chaplin, not least for his "virtually complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology.".

In 1923, Valentin appeared in a half-hour, slapstick film entitled Mysteries of a Barbershop (Mysterien eines Friseursalons).

Karl Valentin inaugurated his "Panoptikum" in 1934 which he had to shut down only 13 months later. Through it his partnership with Liesl Karlstadt went on the rocks because Valentin lost nearly her whole fortune with this project. The outwards always cheerful looking actress didn't have a light life with Karl Valentin because he was a hypochondriac. After all she attempted suicide which fortunately failed.

He was an actor and writer, known for Donner, Blitz und Sonnenschein (1936), Die lustigen Vagabunden (1912) and Der verhexte Scheinwerfer (1934). He was married to Gisela Royes.

The Nazis forbade him to make any more films after 1941 and he was forced to make a living from making and selling wooden utensils.

After performing in a Munich bar in February 1948, he was coincidentally locked in the building and had to spend the night without any protection from the cold. The next day he was found. Karl Valentin caught a cold from that night and died within a few days.

In 1959 based on private initiative the Valentin-Museum was established in the Isartor in Munich. This museum shows absurdities from parts of his legacy.