Horst Janson – A Luftikus and horror hero

Magical moments sometimes occur in little romantic places. For example on a hospital hall, where the incredibly attractive long -term student meets this attractive but cool assistant doctor for the first time. Actually, he only wanted to visit his grandma once, but soon he will come every day. And when the doctor remains dismissive, he promises: “If this is the only way to move back to you, then I let myself be instructed here – and if I have to drink turpentine”. Bad luck for him that it is a gynecological clinic.

So he is a stop, the “Bastian” in the series of the same name, broadcast in 1973 by ZDF: a daredevil, sometimes left -wing sympathizer. Of course, in the course of the 13 episodes he conquered the heart of the doctor played by Karin Anselm. As Bastian, Horst Janson embodied a looseness that had not yet occurred on German television.

Already his frog green, painted Citroën duck signaled cheerful hippietum. You want to call immediately: fragrance! Above all, Janson had the most magnificent blonde hair in the Republic next to Günter Netzer. Shoulder length, with side parting over the blue eyes. When the make -up artist wanted to cut them off before shooting, the director intervened: “They stay!”

“Luftikus”, as Janson was called. “If someone is meant that is not so convulsively dogged and ambitious through life, you can actually transfer the term, which is meant as a compliment,” he told a fanzine decades later. With the “Bastian” the actor made his final breakthrough.

Happy hippietum

Horst Janson, who was born in Mainz in 1935, had already had a long film career at the time. He made his debut in 1959 in the two-part “Buddenbrooks” adaptation by Alfred Weidenmann, played next to Gustaf Gründgens In “The Glass of Water”, in 1962 in the first escape thriller after the construction of the Berlin Wall, Robert Siodmak’s “Tunnel 28”, was there next to Tony Curtis and Charles Bronson for “two guys from granite” in front of the camera and did in 1969 as a trapezoidal artist Sascha Doria through the TV series “Salto Mortale”.

Janson never crashed, he was extremely productive. Not even before action trash like “zinc coffins for the gold boys”, he frightened and cut good figure in uniform, in international world war II films such as “Outbreak of 28”, “The Lullaby of the Damn” or “Steiner-The Iron Cross, 2 . Part”.

“I was just lucky,” said Janson, the Sonnyboy, his life. He also owed many commitments to good English skills. They came from his time as a drama student in Wiesbaden, where he worked as a taxi driver and chauffeured relatives of the US headquarters.

Triumph as a vampire hunter

His appearance as the main actor in the British film “Captain Kronos-Vampirjäger” is now celebrated at horror festivals. In 1974 he flopped, in Germany he didn’t even get to the cinema. One reason for this was that the legendary hammer film studios were in front of the bankruptcy.

Many know Horst Janson from the “Sesame Road”, in which he participated from 1980 to 1985. In the 1990s he played Old Shatterhand and Old Firehand at the Karl May Festival in Bad Segeberg. Until 2018 he was seen on TV, in series such as “in all friendship”, “The Dream Hotel” and “Under White Sailing”. He lived in Munich with his second wife Hella Ruthardt, with her he has two adult daughters. Janson suffered a stroke last yearnow he has died. He was 89 years old.