He is said to have spent more and more time at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, studying the Old Masters, copying many works and figuring out their styles.

[2] In 1974, Braun became acquainted with Herbert Achternbusch, a German independent movie director, and played leading parts in some of his productions.

He is remembered as a bulky and boisterous man, 2 meters (6 feet 4 inches) tall and described as ferocious, in the later years even rabid.

[3] A 1982 article in the magazine Stern is assumed to be the initial recognition of Braun's career as an artist.

He began to use expressive techniques, such as modeling landscapes with clay, sand, mud and dung on the canvas and became brutally honest[2] in his portraits of friends as well as in portraying himself, showing the decay of his body under the influence of laryngeal cancer.

Both times, he spent it on alternative cancer therapies in the care of the controversial Doctor Julius Hackethal.

The respected Süddeutsche Zeitung called his works an elemental power and himself an event of nature because of the impressive force of his paintings.