In the organizer's words:

Christmas reading

To mark the 75th anniversary of the Hesselbachs, Jo has been presenting a new reading entitled "Christmas with the Hesselbachs" since November 2023.

"Die Weihnachtsbescherung" by Wolf Schmidt, first broadcast on 24.12.1949 by Hessischer Rundfunk, is the focus of this dialect reading. And it is highly topical: a refugee family has moved in with the Hesselbachs and is causing a real stir at Christmas. These and other Christmas radio stories by Wolf Schmidt are complemented by other authors of the Hessian dialect who were well known to Schmidt: Karl Ettlinger and Ferdinand Happ.

"Kall, mei Drobbe!" Do you remember Mamma Hesselbach's legendary exclamation? Do you remember the radio and television stories about the Hesselbach company "somewhere in Hesse"?

Jo van Nelsen, who was born near Frankfurt and is well known on all German cabaret stages, has unearthed two wonderful books that are only available in antiquarian bookshops: "Babba" and "Mamma", written in 1967 by Wolf Schmidt, the inventor and unforgotten actor of Babba Hesselbach, who reworked his favorite episodes into independent stories. Van Nelsen now reads from them: Delightfully indulging in bizarre entanglements and hidden sideswipes at politics, which wonderfully still hit the mark today.

And thanks to van Nelsen's universally praised performance skills, the audience discovers radio and television veteran Wolf Schmidt for the first time as an ironically distanced novelist who knows how to show the universal in the personal catastrophes of a Hessian petty bourgeois family and condense the absurdities of everyday life into cabaret dramas. Last but not least, Schmidt's subtlety, as well as his deeply felt commitment to democracy and humanity, place him on an equal footing with the second great Hessian dialect poet, Friedrich Stoltze.

The Hesselbachs were the first television family in Germany whose series truly swept the streets with ratings of up to 94 percent. Because that's what "blockbusters" used to be called here - street sweepers. But that was at a time when people still got upset about a "Dreckrändsche" and a "Röhrender Hirsch" adorned the living room. Van Nelsen received similar acclaim when he launched the Hesselbach reading series in 2006 at the Stalburg Theater, Frankfurt/Main, where he read to a sold-out audience on the first Sunday of every month for three years.

Let yourself be whisked away into Hesselbach's universe full of peace and tranquillity - and when you close your eyes, you will meet them all again: Babba and Mamma Hesselbach, the sons Willi and Peter, daughter Heidi, the Swabian accountant Münzenberger, the head secretary Miss Sauerberg, the housekeeper Mrs. Siebenhals, the apprentice Rudi and all the other unforgotten characters from the successful series "The Hesselbachs".

But if you keep your eyes open, there is only one person sitting there: Jo van Nelsen. But listening to him and watching him play each and every one of them in turn is an experience not to be missed!