Bötschi asks Joe Bausch "Despite all the temptations, I didn't become a criminal"
TV viewers know Joe Bausch as the "Tatort" pathologist. In real life, he was a prison doctor and treated murderers and rapists. A conversation about his childhood marked by violence and abuse.
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- He worked as a prison doctor for more than three decades, but crime fans know him primarily as the forensic doctor in Cologne's "Tatort": Joe Bausch is a man of many talents.
- In his biography "Verrücktes Blut" (Crazy Blood), the 71-year-old describes his youth in the countryside, which was marked by violence and abuse.
- "I didn't like myself as a child and had no self-esteem. I thought I was unlovable," says Bausch in an interview with blue News.
- Referring to the abuse he suffered as a child, Bausch says: "People who can't forgive and are resentful are always carrying a burden around with them."
- The second part of the interview with Joe Bausch will be published tomorrow, Sunday, on blue News.
Joe Bausch, I'm going to ask you as many questions as possible over the next 45 minutes. And please answer as quickly and briefly as possible ...
... I can do everything except give short answers (laughs).
If you don't like a question, you can also say "go on". Mountain or valley?
Valley. The ascent to a summit is often too strenuous and the view in the valley isn't bad either. The mountains look much more impressive from below than from above.
Snow or beach?
Beach. I like water, sun and I also surfed for many years.
Do you prefer water with or without?
Without - it's less of a problem.
You are a person with many talents. You are a doctor, actor and author. What is your greatest talent that nobody knows about yet?
I have a talent for sculpting and painting. But I'm still unsure whether other people see it the same way (laughs).
About the author: Bruno Bötschi
blue News editor Bruno Bötschi regularly talks to well-known personalities from Switzerland and abroad for the question-and-answer game "Bötschi fragt". He asks them lots of questions - always direct, often funny and sometimes profound. It always remains open until the very last question as to where the fast-paced ping-pong will lead.
What can't you do?
Waiting ... my middle name is impatience. I'm not as impatient as I used to be, but ... oh no, waiting is terrible.
Last June, you said on Bayerischer Rundfunk's "Abendschau" program: "I often wanted to put my head through the wall and did crazy things." When was the last time you really fell flat on your face?
Not that long ago.
What has your failure taught you?
That it's completely normal. Defeats, like victories, are part of life.
As a prison doctor and actor, you spent decades studying the biographies of other people. Your biography "Crazy Blood" now focuses on your life.
I thought it was time to tell my life story for once. I have often seen people with experiences of abuse and violence end up in prison. I, however, sit on the other side of the desk. I may have grown up on a farm, but I am more skilled at writing than plowing a field. Writing the biography was my way of plowing my field again and making it fertile.
"He who remembers lives twice," said the Italian writer Franca Magnani, who died in 1996. Do you agree with that?
Absolutely. That's why I chose a quote from Martin Walser from a 1998 Spiegel interview as the last sentence in my book: "Memory is a production in which the present is just as involved as the past." My zest for life also increased while I was writing the book. I hadn't expected that.
Why again is the title of your book "Crazy Blood"?
I was a lively child. I was constantly falling down or falling off somewhere, hitting my knee or getting a cut on my head. After such mishaps, my aunt Res would take me on her lap and put a handkerchief on my wound. "That's good, a little hole in the head like that," she always said, "then the crazy blood can drain away."
This reassured me as a child. I was never scared when I bled. I therefore found it a nice metaphor for my book. My aunt's calmness in the face of a bleeding wound stayed with me later when I was working as a doctor.
In the book, you describe your childhood as traumatic because it was characterized by beatings, violence and abuse. What do you want to achieve with your openness?
I want to encourage people to talk to me because, after reading my biography, they will see that you can become an optimistic, friendly and happy person despite a complicated and violent childhood. As a prison doctor, I also managed to work with sex offenders without lacking the necessary empathy, despite being a victim of abuse.
With my book, however, I also want to give hope to people who had a similar experience to mine in their childhood. And I think I've managed to do that. Since publishing my biography, I have received over 270 letters and emails from people who have told me their story and thanked me for my openness. Not least because the topic of abuse is still taboo, especially in one's own family. This makes it all the more important that people like me talk about it in public.
Your father beat you whenever you made a perceived mistake. What did these constant punishments do to you?
My father didn't tolerate fear or weakness. Of course it was painful and got deep under my skin when I was beaten by him. I didn't like myself as a child and had no self-esteem. I thought I was unlovable.
Did you never think about hitting back?
Violence often leads to counter-violence. As I grew up, I also thought about hitting back from time to time. But I never did it.
What did your mother do when your father hit you?
My father was impulsive, even hot-tempered and often simply overwhelmed. My mother was a calculating person. She always knew when it was time for a reckoning. That irritated me much more as a child than my father's beatings. My mother's most frequent phrase was: "Don't hit her in the head, it'll make her stupid."
Oh, my God ...
... a nasty sentence.
A terribly bad sentence. Your parents had taken in your foster son Uwe shortly before you were born because they thought they wouldn't be able to have children. Uwe, who was ten years older than you, later sexually abused you.
I was able to talk to other people about the abuse I experienced at an early age. However, I was only able to forgive Uwe many years later. We shared a room as children. When I was six, he started asking me to do disgusting things, which I couldn't defend myself against out of shame until I was ten years old. Uwe knew that there was no one I could confide in.
Today I know that forgiving is often difficult. However, it is extremely important for your own health. People who can't forgive and are resentful are constantly carrying a burden around with them. Although I forgave my foster brother, I didn't become more forgiving as a result. I still don't understand a lot of things today. But over the years I have come to realize that Uwe is a failed personality. And he never recovered from this failure.
How did you learn to forgive?
The fact that I can forgive today has to do with my work as an actor. There are always situations in life that are difficult to bear. When I think about this as an actor, I can adopt a different perspective, abstract myself and distance myself from it. During my work as an actor, I was also able to approach my own abysses and deficits again and again. That has helped me.
But today I also know how good it is for me to get rid of a role after I've had to play a psychopath on stage for a long time, for example. I think this kind of preoccupation with evil as an actor and my own dark corners of the mind led to me developing a different understanding and having fewer scruples about prisoners. In short: perhaps I had to play a criminal from time to time in order to know that I was one of the good guys.
Do you still have contact with your foster brother today?
No. We broke off contact shortly after my father kicked him out. I was ten or eleven years old at the time. After that, as I write in my biography, he turned up at our house again. At some point I found out that he had lived very close to us for a few years. I never saw him again, but I never felt the need to. I later found out from a reliable source that he died very young.
When you wanted to talk to your mother years later about the abuse, she said, "Stop it, I don't want to know. Tell me something else."
That was a terrible moment. Now that you've asked me the question, I can feel the powerlessness again that hit me back then after my mother's answer.
In your biography, you write that something in you was broken again back then: "I was unable to forgive this betrayal."
It's terrible to be beaten. I couldn't forgive my father for years. He beat me until I was 18. I was only really able to forgive my mother when I wrote my biography. Dealing with my life story made me more forgiving.
Nevertheless, you dedicate the book to your parents. Why?
I only decided to dedicate my biography to my parents at the very end, after I had finished writing the book. It took me a long time to understand that they were also caring parents. My father worked hard, my mother too. And they did it all for our family.
Despite all the traumatic experiences during your childhood, you managed to become a positive and emphatic person. Are you more resilient than others?
I don't like the word "resilience" because it individualizes the ability of victims - in the sense of: It's a coincidence that one person makes it and another doesn't. Instead, I believe that almost everyone can manage to deal with trauma, regardless of how they are wired. Be it through professional therapy or through intensive discussions with trusted friends.
Studies show that over 40 percent of all offenders experienced violence at a young age. Were you also attracted to evil in the past?
The 60s with the protest movements and the emergence of drugs such as LSD and hashish were a special decade. I was never attracted to evil per se. But between you and me, I could probably have become a drug dealer or a pimp. And I could answer now that I lacked the courage for these professions. But in the end I always knew: I don't want to do that.
What else prevented you from becoming a bad person?
I've always been a curious person who wanted to know a lot. A person's conscience grows through learning and knowledge and through coming to terms with social moral concepts. I have also always enjoyed taking on responsibility. These three pillars ensured that, despite all the temptations, I didn't become a criminal.
The second part of the interview with Joe Bausch will be published tomorrow, Sunday, December 15, on blue News.
