National Youth Orchestra of Germany

© Uwe Stratmann

Something to be proud of: Dietmar Bär, who plays the character of Freddy Schenk in the Cologne Tatort crime series, was voted the most popular TV investigator in Germany in 2014. He has played the Detective Inspector in over 60 cases since 1997 and won the German Television Award in 2000. Together with Klaus J. Behrendt, he received the Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2015 from Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft. Dietmar Bär, a native of Dortmund, considers it of extreme importance to remain close to his people. As often as he can, the ardent fan of Borussia Dortmund mixes with the fans in the stadium in his black and yellow jersey. His daily life, however, is rather different from the rough big guy with an insatiable appetite for “currywurst” he plays in the Tatort series. Dietmar Bär loves to read, listens to all kinds of music and has developed into a gourmet with vegetarian preferences: “I am too old for cheap wine and bad food.” However, he is not too old for the various social causes he supports: Bär is a founding member of “Tatort – Straßen der Welt e.V.” which supports children’s rights in the Philippines, in Swaziland and Germany. And he supports Young Euro Classic not only as an evening patron, but also as a member of the German Association of Friends of European Youth Orchestras e.V.

© Hoffotografen

The conductor Patrick Lange launched his international career from Berlin. Here, he was First Conductor at the Komische Oper starting in 2008 before filling the vacant position of General Music Director from 2010 to 2012, with the title of chief conductor. During this time, he conducted important premieres, such as Wagner’s Meistersinger, Dvořák’s Rusalka and Mozart’s Idomeneo. At the same time, Lange made his debut at the Vienna State Opera in 2010, where he has returned regularly ever since, most recently in 2016, when he led Puccini’s Tosca and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. He has appeared in Dresden and Hamburg and at the opera houses in Zurich, London, Paris, Seoul and Toronto. Most recently, the 36-year-old conducted a new production of Lulu at the Weimar Opera. In the autumn of 2017 he will become General Music Director in Wiesbaden. A former assistant to Claudio Abbado at the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Lange is also in high demand as a concert conductor and has already worked with the National Youth Orchestra of Germany several times.

Ralf König became known to a broader audience when his comic book Der bewegte Mann was released as a movie featuring Katja Riemann and Til Schweiger in 1994. Previously, the comic-strip artist from Soest, Westphalia had already found enthusiastic fans for his chronicles of gay life, for example Silvestertuntenball and Sahneschnittchen. These were followed by volumes such as Superparadise (about Aids) and Sie dürfen sich jetzt küssen (about gay marriage). With an overall circulation of almost seven million books, Ralf König became the world’s most popular author of explicitly homosexual stories. His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages, most recently into Catalan, Gaelic and Polish. The artist, who is 56 today, found another focus for his work in Dschinn Dschinn (2006), which deals with radical Islamism. The same year, he also became noted for his comments on the controversy about the Danish Mohammed caricatures.

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