His Swiss accent, the dancing bushy eyebrows that tickle your laughing muscles almost on their own: veteran Emil Steinberger is 90 years old and shows himself to be lively on stage and in social media.
Basel – Anyone turning 90 should know that despite unlimited free time, pensioners can never get bored thanks to the many courses on offer, says Swiss cabaret artist Emil Steinberger mischievously. “Don’t miss the three-day course: we’ll make clothes hangers out of empty beer cans,” he says like the speaker of an advertising slogan, and then adds: “It can be fun, because the beer cans have to be empty.”
Steinberger has had the laughs on his side for what feels like forever with such jokes. Life as a pensioner is alien to him, even today. In 2022 he was more than 60 times with a full-length program on cabaret stages. On January 6th he will be 90 years old.
“One of the most common questions I’m asked: Why do you do it to stand on stage for two hours in the evening?” Steinberger told the German Press Agency. “Well, it must be fun for me, otherwise I wouldn’t do it.” For him, the stage is like medicine. “Sometimes you realize before the performance that the flu is approaching. Then you perform – and when you’re done, you don’t feel it anymore,” he says.
Swiss national shrine
Steinberger is considered by many Swiss to be a national shrine, so to speak, part of Swiss cultural heritage and a humor icon. He always brushes aside such honors, though he happily collects prizes, gives interviews, and is active on social media like Facebook and Twitter (@OriginalEmil).
Steinberger has remained true to his style: jokes that touch the human being, in which people find themselves because they may have experienced such scenes themselves. Counter clerks, for example, who sometimes harp on about paragraphs and drive customers crazy. Or the father who, in his dogged search for a loose screw, almost turns a pram upside down and forgets that the baby is still in there. “There are numbers that still work after 40 years,” says Steinberger.
In Germany, Steinberger’s appearances on television in the 70s and 80s were street sweepers. The family gathered to laugh together. For many, the Swiss impact was hilarious, for example when Steinberger brought up a number about parking, “parking” in Swiss German.
early passion
Steinberger was initially a postman in the 1950s, but his passion for the stage, which he had discovered while he was still at school, would not let him go. He quit and started as a cabaret artist in 1964 with the program “Emil and the 40 robbers”. A bit of goofiness, a lot of wit, never showing up – fans of today’s comedy greats may find that old-fashioned, but it works. And the facial expressions: Steinberger says he once asked a viewer if her little daughter wasn’t bored. “She said: The little one just looked at your eyebrows and had a great time.”
Steinberger now lives in Basel with his second wife Niccel (57), who comes from Wermelskirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia. “Niccel, pronounced like Gucci” Steinberger likes to introduce his wife. They met in New York, where Steinberger took a break of several years from European cabaret life in the 1990s. Niccel Steinberger paints, photographs and writes books for his own publishing house, with a preference for humor and laughter.
Emil Steinberger is working on a biography, as he says, but is making little progress given the many appearances and appointments. “So much has happened and life goes on and something new always happens,” he says. Publication is not in sight.
Around the date of his birthday, Swiss television shows some Emil stage programs and the film “Die Schweizermacher” from 1978 about the difficult naturalization in Switzerland. It stars Steinberger as an immigration officer who has to snoop on applicants’ homes. It was one of the most successful Swiss films of all time.
There is no birthday gala or big party. “I know people who have celebrated their 90th with a banquet and lots of guests and then dropped dead from the stress,” he says. dpa
