From BZ/dpa
The speaker Jürgen Kluckert, known from the “Benjamin Blümchen” radio plays, is dead.
This was confirmed to the German Press Agency on Wednesday from industry circles. Colleague Julia Bautz had previously written about it in the short message service X. Kluckert, who lived near Potsdam, was 79 years old.
Kluckert was a busy dubbing and radio play speaker. Best known is his role as Benjamin Blümchen. In the mid-1990s he took over the main part of a talking elephant from Edgar Ott after his death in the popular children’s series. Since then, more than 70 episodes have been created with his characteristic good-natured, deep voice as the centerpiece. Fans of the animated series “SpongeBob SquarePants” still remember him as the spokesman for the crab character Mr. Krabs.
A graduate of the Ernst Busch state drama school, he has dubbed many Hollywood stars, including Chuck Norris, Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, James Brolin, Robbie Coltrane and Louis Gossett junior. In the 1980s version of the television series “Magnum” he voiced Roger E. Mosley in the role of the helicopter pilot “TC”. Kluckert was also seen on German TV as an actor, several times with supporting roles in “Tatort”.
In the post-war period, Kluckert initially lived in East Germany and played at the Maxim Gorki Theater for twelve years, among other things. “I left the GDR in 1980,” he said in a 2022 “History Channel” interview. “I then also acted in the Federal Republic of Germany, but I ended up more and more in the dubbing studio. In the GDR someone said to me before: “You have a very pretty voice! Try it at DEFA-Synchron! You can still earn something there!” And then I did it.”
He has “dubbed so many people, but I haven’t met any of them yet,” he recalled in an interview. Inheriting the role of Benjamin Blümchen was a challenge, he said in an interview. “Edgar Ott died in 1994. And he also voiced Sinclair in The Dinosaurs. That was the first thing I took from him because I sounded a bit like him, that is, if I change the voice a bit. It wasn’t possible with my normal voice.” During the first recordings he “every time I said a sentence, (…) listened to a sentence from Edgar beforehand. Of course, now I don’t need it anymore. We have become freer and also faster.”
Julia Bautz wrote on X: “Today I am thinking of a voice from my childhood, his warm manner, his warmth and his wonderful family. Bon voyage, take care of yourself up there and thank you for Benjamin Blümchen, Mr. Krabs and simply endless childhood.” The “PC Games” portal also reported on the subject.