Aug 14 2008
Kinski really was mad
I know, I’m venturing into limited-interest territory here again, it’s a follow up to my post last month on notorious German actor Klaus Kinski, who was known for his intense, maniacal outbursts on movie sets. I found a recent article on a German website that does indeed explain Kinski’s eccentric behavior:
The Karl Bonhoeffer Nerve Clinic in the city’s Reinickendorf district, once known as the “State Insane and Idiot Asylum of Dalldorf,” released some 100,000 old patient records this week, according the Berlin daily Berliner Morgenpost on Tuesday.
Kinski’s records stem from a time when the clinic was called the Wittenauer Heilstätten, and have been in the clinic archive since September 5, 1950 under the name Klaus Nakschinski, Kinski’s birthname. According to German daily Bild, the first page of the file reads “Preliminary diagnosis: Schizophrenia. Conclusion: Psychopathy.”
Granted, a lot has changed in what we know about mental health since then, but there are many classic symptoms in Kisnki’s behavior that would most certainly point towards schizophrenia.
Here’s a clip from his notorious “Jesus Christ: Savior” tour. He had just come off of the success of Aguirre: The Wrath of God, and expected crowds to treat him like Jesus, in his monologue that was a portrayal of Jesus as a deranged lunatic. It wasn’t exactly received so well (as you can see below), and turned out to be quite the disaster.
5 Responses to “Kinski really was mad”
Posts
Actually, he’s got Jehovah down pat.
They’d have loved him in a fundamnentalist church. He’d be great at handing out snakes.
Well, he was a lunatic and but at least he could act
And now for something comepletely different:
Ronald Reagan !
Did you ever see the Herzog comedy documentary “Incident at Loch Ness”? It was quite…odd…
No I haven’t but I’ll look into it.
Scherp, re: Reagan…
What is little known is that Reagan also did a Jesus Christ monologue tour, similar to Kinski’s, except he portrayed Jesus as an incontinent person who rambled on incoherently about the evils of socialized medicine. It didn’t go over well ,either, once the audience figured out that the gov’t was paying for Reagan’s diapers.