Johannes Heesters, the world’s oldest stage performer, turned 104 in Berlin on Wednesday, with the Dutch-born operetta singer set to do a birthday special in the evening in a city theatre.
Heesters kept to his habit of rising late and breakfasting on cappuccino while phone calls of congratulation had to wait, his wife, Simone Rethel-Heesters (58), said at their Berlin hotel.
The couple’s home is south of Munich.
Heesters’s agent said he was most touched by a call from the Dutch theatre that engaged him for a gig in February, his first show in The Netherlands for decades.
Heesters, whose celebrity career began in 1934 in Vienna, is reviled in his homeland for collaborating with the Nazis. He acted dandy roles in German feel-good movies during World War II.
He even flattered the SS guards at Dachau concentration camp with a 1941 visit. ”But I never sang to them,” Heesters told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant recently. ”I’m sorry I let the SS lead me astray.”
”I wish Holland would make peace with me,” he said last year before the invitation home.
Though his sight has failed and his voice quavers, white-haired Heesters continues to tour Germany, performing numbers from The Merry Widow and other operettas popular in pre-war Europe as well as new songs.
His wife steers him during the song-and-chat act.
The living legend, who continues to smoke, was performing on Wednesday in the Admiralspalast theatre in Berlin. He is to do a show next year in De Flint, a theatre in Amersfoort where he was born.
Asked to reveal a birthday wish, he told Germany’s mass-market newspaper Bild on Wednesday he would not mind living till 110 and hoped Germany revoked its ban on smoking in most restaurants.
”I’m turning 104,” Heesters joked last week, ”but, you know, I feel as if I’m still only 100.” — Sapa-dpa