Sven Bensmann

In the artist's words:

SVEN BENSMANN was born in Osnabrück in December 1992 and grew up in the village of Hagen am Teutoburger Wald in Lower Saxony. From an early age, he showed an intuitive passion for inspiring others with his creative streak.

Although four short weeks in the local mini football team only allowed him to blossom in throwing himself protectively in front of the daisies on the lawn to prevent them from being trampled, Sven was already able to classify countless dinosaur species as herbivores, carnivores or omnivores at pre-school age and assign them to either the Jurassic, Triassic or Cretaceous periods.

Sven took to the stage for the first time in Year 7 as part of his school's Big Band group. A sympathetic music teacher discovered his talent and advised Sven to try his hand at singing.

At the age of 14, Sven wanted to give his grandmother a special present for her 80th birthday. Without further ado, he surprises her as a Horst Schlämmer lookalike, which not only earns him applause but also laughter from the audience for the first time. From then on, Sven supplements his pocket money with guest appearances at weddings, birthdays and shooting festivals as a Horst Schlämmer impersonator. His father drives the young man, who is still a minor, to gigs in the Osnabrück region almost every weekend, which often take place in bizarre places or in strange settings. Looking back, Sven sees this time as the hardest school of repartee he could have gone through.

But as time goes by and he grows up, Sven wants to shed the gray disguise of the Hape Kerkeling character and take to the stage as himself. As part of his voluntary work as a group leader, Sven learns that it is a worthwhile pleasure to use his own ideas to help and inspire his fellow human beings. He accompanies children to weekly group lessons and summer camps. At these camps, he is most enthusiastic about sitting together every evening and singing around the campfire. He teaches himself to play the guitar so that he can help shape these hours in the best possible way.

In 2012, he and his school friends founded the band Hi!Spencer, of which he is still the frontman and mostly the songwriter. When writing melancholy lyrics for the band, he notices that some of the things he feels are not serious enough for his own punk rock band have a witty quality to them. He continues to combine his love of music with an emerging passion for comedy and performs for the first time at the Quatsch Comedy Club Talentschmiede in 2014, where he wins three preliminary rounds and makes it to the final in 2015. Even if he does not win the competition, his path leads him to further appearances in renowned formats such as the cult comedy show NightWash and 1Live-Hörsaal Comedy. (together with Bastian Bielendorfer, Herr Schröder, Simon Stäblein and Thomas Schmidt) In 2017, Sven becomes co-host and sidekick of Nightwash alongside Tahnee. He is a welcome guest at the Quatsch Comedy Club and the Komische Nächte. In the further course of his career, Sven tours with his very first program "COMEDY. MUSIC. LIEBE." through Germany, appeared on NDR, WDR, MDR and Sat1 and won the Bremen Comedy Prize in 2019, the "Kleiner Hurz" in 2021 and the "Güldener August" at the 9th Humorzone Dresden in 2023.