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She liked being a little mean

She first had to do an apprenticeship as a confectioner.

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She liked being a little mean

She first had to do an apprenticeship as a confectioner. Then she was allowed to become an actress. As a sweet little girl, as is usual in Vienna films, she started in 1955 at the age of 17 alongside Rudolf Prack as Mary Vetsera in "Kronprinz Rudolph's Last Love". It must have been difficult for Christiane Hörbiger to free herself from the overpowering shadow of her parents on the same career path.

And yet, the three daughters of the Austrian great actor couple Paula Wessely and Attila Hörbiger, Elisabeth born in 1936, Christiane who was two years younger and Maresa, who was born in 1945, all were drawn to the stage. Maresa disappeared again early on, Elisabeth Orth consistently made a theater career under a different name and is today the doyenne of the Burgtheater.

It was in "German Dallas", the "legacy of the Guldenburgs", which had just been put back in the ZDF media library, where she appeared for four years in a series from 1987 as an Austrian and widow of the count who had been exiled to Schleswig-Holstein with three other strong actresses - Ufa legend Brigitte Horney (who died after two seasons) as the matriarch, Iris Berben as a drunken stepdaughter and Ruth-Maria Kubitschek as a depressed brewery competitor - had to measure. And of course Hörbiger rushed through the TV finish line in a ladylike manner as German Alexis Carrington.

While Senta Berger lit up the TV screens as the ever-beautiful Salzburg native, Hörbiger from Vienna delivered the red-white-red Bette Davis with a raspy, cold tone. A lady, but also the ruthless bitch who suddenly squirts the poison out of her well-made mouth - charming, but mean. That's why ARD gave her the monster Claire Zachanassian in an updated version of Dürrenmatt's "The Old Lady's Visit" for her 70th birthday.

In 1992, Christiane Hörbiger offered a highlight of harsh and rough, grim and poisonous, but always with sugar icing, as Göring's niece Freya von Hepp in the social satire “Schtonk!” by Helmut Dietl, worthy of a Billy Wilder. She is as meanly vulgar as ice-cold seductive when, on the hunt for the forged Hitler diaries, she whistles to the brilliantly staring Götz George, who is glistening with beads of sweat, as the final act of devotion on the double bed: "You're a really, uh, greasy guy! And then she lets the eyelets of her bodice crack like gunshots when she unhooks them. No wonder that later one of her films was called "The Praying Mantis".

The extremely versatile Hörbiger, long since one of the formative, multi-award-winning TV faces, but she was also able to do it in a hands-on way and patently. Like 63 episodes from 1998 to 2003 as a district judge in the series "Julia - an extraordinary woman". And even Degeto-Schmarren à la "Happiness is a cactus" refined them. Christiane Hörbiger said on her eightieth birthday that she wanted to retire. And it's done, that's why Mavie Hörbiger, her second-degree niece, is now playing the "Jedermann" devil in Salzburg - and maybe next summer also the paramour?

There is so much theater talent in the Hörbiger family, for three generations, that it can be frightening. Now one has burned out. Christiane Hörbiger died in Baden near Vienna. She was 84 years old.

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