Elfi Eschke is a German-Austrian stage and screen actress who came to prominence during the 1980s and 1990s, taking starring roles in generally light-hearted television dramas and movies directed by Reinhard Schwabenitzky (1947-2022), whom during the 1980s she married.
In a recent interview, given to mark her seventieth birthday, Eschke confessed to a parallel career as the landlady at the "Itzlinger Hof" (Hotel-Restaurant) in Salzburg.
[7] After graduating from college, Eschke embarked on the conventional, if informal, apprenticeship route, building up her experience on the provincial theatre circuit.
[9] Baden-Baden had been the head office location for Südwestfunk, the regional radio and (increasingly) television broadcasting organisation ever since the military administrators in the French occupation zone had grudgingly permitted its creation between 1946 and 1948.
[4][8] A critical turning point came in 1981 with the six part television drama "Tour de Ruhr", featuring Harald Schlümer, a Dortmund railway employee, and his girl-friend, Ines, who together team up with a colleague of Schlümer's called Karlheinz Stratmann, along with Stratmann's wife Elisabeth, their couple's daughter Martina and Wölfchen, Martina's friend/admirer, for a cycling holiday.
In many ways the starring role is taken by the countryside and the industrial heritage in the hill country east of Dortmund, but there are also plenty of arguments, marital differences, jealousies and punctured bicycle tyres to entertain television audiences.
"Tour de Ruhr" was directed by Reinhard Schwabenitzky, who had built a reputation as a director of mass-appeal television comedy drama in his native Vienna during the 1970s.
Second on the character list is Gabi Neuhammer, a member of the team in the typing pool who is capable of gaucheness, flippancy, apparent lack of appropriate respect, but fiercely loyal.
It is probably at around this time that Eschke's career peaked, with leading roles in "In Zeiten wie diesen" (1990), an Austrian television series adapted by Schwabenitzky from an existing work by Wolfgang Bauer, and the feature film Ilona und Kurti, a black-humour comedy in which, under Schwabenitsky's direction, she starred opposite the Viennese actor-restaurateur, Hanno Pöschl.
[4] For Eschke, further successes in Schwabenitsky productions continued through the 1990s, such as "Kaisermühlen Blues" (1992–2000), a television series which ran to 64 episodes divided into 7 sets.
In terms of many criteria, however, it was her starring role in "Hannah" (1996) that marked Eschke's greatest cinema triumph, winning her a "best actress" prize at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Lucas indeed made his public acting debut as a child star, appearing with his mother, with whom he has also featured as a "trainee chef" on a Christmas television cookery show.