For all its madcap eccentricities, The Olympic-Winning Lady lays bares more autobiographical allusions than any other Achternbusch work. As in the film, his father was actually a dentist, his mother a sports instructor during the time of the Olympics (and the year of his conception), and he an illegitimate child who remained unadopted by his father until 1960. Nevertheless, realism and chronological order are quickly set aside as Herbert’s birth, although accurately placed in 1938, unfolds amidst howling sirens and the sounds of a bombing raid that took place well before the onset of the Second World War. What is important for Achternbusch are not the dates or the facts but the pervasive inner state of the country in which he grew up, whose destruction he experienced as a child. —http://hcl.harvard.edu
Herbert Achternbusch, born November 23, 1938, in Munich, wanted to become a painter and poet after finishing secondary school. But from 1960 to 1962, he consecutively studied at Pädagogische Hochschule München-Pasing, at Nuremberg’s Kunstakademie, and for three semesters at Munich’s Akademie der Bildenden Künste instead. Then, from 1962 on, Achternbusch worked in several jobs before colleagues and friends such as Martin Walser advised him to become a writer rather than a painter.
In 1969, Suhrkamp published “Hülle”, a collection of stories, Achternbusch’s first publication of meanwhile more than 50 books. Shortly after the publication, Achternbusch started to make films on substandard film and became part of the German auteur film scene. Achternbusch then played parts in films by Werner Herzog and Volker Schlöndorff and wrote the screen play to Herzog’s Herz aus Glas (Heart of Glass). —filmportal.de
