In Greece he became famous from his film Giannis Smaragdis “God loves caviar”. There he plays the demon merchant Ioannis Varvakis, who started from the poor Fishermen to become sought after in the Court of Catherine the Great. He came to Athens again in October 2019 for the premiere of the film “Do not lower your gaze” at the Michalis Kakogiannis Foundation. According to Greek publications every now and then he enjoys his holidays in Paros. This is him Sebastian Koch, one of the most emblematic actors of his generation. Speaking earlier to Deutsche Welle he revealed that had loved Greece since he was a child, as he came every year for holidays in the Greek islands. And at the height of the euro crisiswhen Greek-German relations were being tested, Sebastian Koch he felt obliged not to remain silent, to say a word about Greece.
Today the good actor turns 60 years old. The appointment for the interview with the German News Agency (DPA) was given at Café Einstein, in Kourfirstenstrasse, in the heart of old West Berlin. It used to be his hangout. He hugs the waitress intimately, orders cappuccino with oat milk. He recently returned to the small screen, years later, with the TV series “Euer Ehren”, in which he plays a judge who is targeted by the mafia. The critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung speaks of a “magnificent interpretation”. But does Sebastian Koch read reviews? “Okay, I do not put Google-Alert to see when the next text will appear, but yes, I read the reviews, positive and negative.”
Makes less TV today. He generally does fewer things. “I have often heard myself say ‘I will finally take a break’ and then I thought I was saying the same thing two or even three years ago. “At some point I decided to take this break,” says Sebastian Koch. “That’s why I do fewer and more selected jobs.” He is of course lucky, because he accepts many proposals and “among them are interesting things, there are some nonsense, but there are also things that you say ‘I must do this by all means’. And you know, I’m in the habit of reading all the scripts, from beginning to end. “
“The lives of others”, a film-station
Many years before the film of Giannis Smaragdis, surely many Greeks would have located Sebastian Koch in masterpiece political thriller of Florian Henkel von Donnersmark “The Lives of Others”, which won many tickets in Greece, won the award for best European film in 2006, but also the Oscar for foreign language film. The action takes place in the former East Germany in the … symbolic year 1984, with the mighty “Stasi” watching everyone.
Koch plays playwright Georg Draiman, who begins to view the regime critically, but does not seek to overthrow it. The secret services are watching him, his wife betrays him to advance her career, but his pursuer, Stasi Colonel Gerd Weasler, is also tormented by his own demons. In this film, Sebastian Koch has the good fortune to co-star with some of the best German actors of his generation, such as Ulrich Mue, Martina Gedek and Ulrich Tucur.
After all Hollywood could not wait any longer. In 2015, Koch starred, as regime lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, in his excellent film Steven Spielberg “The Bridge of Spies”. The story takes place in Berlin during the Cold War and is based on real events, namely the spy exchanges that took place until 1986 on the Glinike bridge near Potsdam, which at that time connected the East with the West Sector of the divided German capital.
In search of paradise
And today; “I try to be true to myself, to be honest with myself and to enjoy every moment.” says Sebastian Koch to DPA. Every now and then he appears in literary evenings accompanied by music and, as he emphasizes, “I’m having a lot of fun with this. For example, I started the ‘Paradise’ program with (German-Irish musician and violinist) Daniel Hope, “it’s a wonderful thing.”
Paradise, as “paradise”. “Five years ago I was thinking: What is paradise like? What content does this concept have for me? says Sebastian Koch. “I grew up with Christian doctrine, thinking that we have to work hard to go to heaven, but something is wrong with this theory. I finally come to the conclusion that we are already living in paradise. We are here. We can function so mentally that we do not even realize it, we can not guard it, we can not reconcile with this thought. But we have all the conditions … “
DW / Julia Killian (DPA) / Editor: Giannis Papadimitriou
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