A dedicated couple
Anna Loos and Jan Josef Liefers are actors, singers and committed citizens – and a married couple with a lot to say to each other.
Anna Loos and Jan Josef Liefers certainly have an exciting time together. There are three levels at which they can meet: that of a married couple, that of actors, and that of singers. They have been together since 2000, and married since 2004. They met while making the feature film Hold me tight (Halt mich fest!), of all things. Since then they have made seven films together, the most recent being in 2013, the ARD film Night over Berlin, about the burning of the Reichstag in 1933.
Liefers points out that they receive a lot more offers for that kind of double-pack role than they would ever accept. Their reasons for being careful in their choice are not so much professional, as the concern that playing a couple could get in the way of their achievements as independent artists. They are also cautious about letting the media into their private lives so they try to minimize the publicity aspect. Liefers told Berliner Zeitung that they “are not all that happy about granting access, but now and then we say OK.” There have been no scandals so far. And what about being together in front of the camera? They both see this as a challenge. Loos says: “In that respect, we can be quite critical about one another, which helps our acting.”
While acting together is possible, singing together is impossible. Jan Josef Liefers will be touring again with his band Oblivion in spring 2014. This has nothing to do with a certain trend for “TV stars to take up a guitar and start singing”. Liefers has been in the music business for a long time. When he left the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, where he had been directed by Heiner Müller, among others, it was to go to the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, where he worked with Tom Waits (The Black Rider). And you have to be able to play to be accepted by that music grandee! In 2006 Liefers toured Germany with his stage show Soundtrack of My Childhood, during which he talked about everyday life in Real Existing Socialism before the fall of the Berlin Wall, in between songs by groups like Renft, Puhdys, Lift and Silly.
Anna Loos had to step into someone else’s shoes once. She was touring with various bands, when that big moment came. In 2006, Loos succeeded the lead singer of Silly, Tamara Danz, the charismatic and much loved musician who died in 1996. Musically that meant returning to home ground for Loos, a former GDR citizen. She writes lyrics, and these have to be political and critical, otherwise they do not fit into the Silly domain. Anyone keen to make value judgements in the case of Loos/Liefers could say: Liefers is still the more famous actor, Loos still the more famous musician.
There is even a fourth level on which this couple can meet: both grew up in what was then the GDR. Anna Loos, born in 1970 in Brandenburg on the river Havel, fled to the West in 1989 before the Wall fell in November. She had told no one anything about her plan. In an interview with Berliner Morgenpost she explained: “If no one knew anything about it, no one could be implicated.” Jan Josef Liefers, born in 1964 in Dresden, refused to serve in the People’s Army, which was an insult to the GDR. As a result, he was not allowed to take the university entrance exam. He completed an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker and then attended the Ernst Busch acting academy. Alongside civil-rights activists like Jens Reich and Marianne Birthler, Liefers was one of the speakers on Alexanderplatz in Berlin on 4 November 1989, when hundreds of thousands of people protested against the GDR regime.
Even in 2014, on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he still finds it incredible how the revolution in eastern Germany took place, as he told Tagesspiegel: “For me it’s a puzzle and a miracle.” But Liefers has no phantom pains. “The GDR state and its institutions are not something I regard as part of my life.”
So the lives of these two people are linked by their work biographies. Neither Loos nor Liefers mourns the GDR past, yet they are more credible when cast in such period roles due to their origins and experiences. Anna Loos has been successful in a second season of the TV series Weissensee, which presents GDR history within the framework of the story of a family in the GDR.
Jan Josef Liefers recently excelled in the film of Uwe Tellkamp’ novel The Tower. What is more, he agrees with what was claimed in a review in Film Dienst: Liefers imbues “his roles with a masculinity that is full of nuances” and avoids letting himself be tied down to any specific type. Indeed Liefers often acts in films that reflect contemporary history, history, GDR history – it is a thread that runs through his filmography.
It is the same with Anna Loos, in whose career East-West roles abound. And what applies to Liefers also applies to her: the historical events may impinge directly on the figures she plays, but these visibly change into active subjects. Is history made? Yes, but we make our own histories out of it.
Showing commitment is part of both their lives. Loos and her husband are involved in One, the internationally active organization that campaigns against extreme poverty and avoidable diseases. That is not the only social project they devote time to. Liefers recently took powdered milk to Syria, but had to accept a lot of criticism because he was accompanied on the trip by the tabloid daily Bild. In Liefers’ view that was not the point. What is much worse is just “to sit on your sofa”.
The couple live with their two daughters in Steglitz, a good middle-class district in West Berlin. Liefers has a third daughter and a son from other relationships. The year 2014 is destined to be another challenging one for Anna Loos and Jan Josef Liefers. Liefers has set up a film production company, and he will be playing his most popular role again, that of Professor Boerne, the arrogant forensic pathologist in the Tatort series filmed in the city of Münster. That is always shown on a Sunday. So, on Saturday he can watch his wife as inspector Helen Dorn in a new TV crime series. Perhaps that could lead to an exciting race for viewing figures. In anticipation, Loos remarks: “It’s not that we are indifferent to the figures. We make films we hope people like to watch.” What counts more than anything else for them both is that they are satisfied with their work. “We don’t compete with one another.” ▪
