She was his advisor, manager and better half: the singer and actress Hannelore Kramm was the woman at Heino’s side for more than four decades. Now she is dead. She died a week ago, on November 8th, at the age of 82 in Kitzbühel, Austria – at home in her own bed, as Heino’s manager Helmut Werner told the German Press Agency on Wednesday. The “Bild” newspaper had previously reported.
“Heino is devastated and in deep sadness,” said Werner. “That was the worst day of his life.” Heino himself was filming in Berlin, stopped it and rushed to his wife.
Because of her, the couple recently moved their center of life from Bad Münstereifel to Kitzbühel in Austria. “Hannelore feels more comfortable in Austria,” Heino, a Düsseldorf native, said a year ago. The climate will improve your health.
Heino and Hannelore married in 1979 and were considered the dream couple of German folk music for many years. Heino was on stage, she was the woman behind it. “If I didn’t have Hannelore, I would still be walking around in a turtleneck,” he once said.
After their wedding in 1979, Hannelore Kramm became the most important person for Heino, not only privately but also professionally. The turtleneck sweaters that were so typical of him at the time disappeared – they gave him a new outfit, gave him more confidence in dealing with the media, and gave him new impetus for his career.
Was she also the inspiration for the new Heino image as a rocker? “She was definitely an asset,” Heino’s management remained vague. “I believe that Hannelore was crucially involved,” said someone who initially accompanied Heino alone and later also Heino and Hannelore very closely professionally for decades. “Nobody could get past Hannelore when it came to important questions.”
She is said to have recently not liked the fact that folk musician Heino (84) covered Mickie Krause’s Ballermann hit “10 naked hairdressers”. “I asked him if he had lost his mind,” she was quoted as saying. “How does he come up with such ideas at his age?!”
The Linz-born Austrian already knew show business when she married Heino. The fashion designer for dirndl and folklore fashion had already produced records as a singer and appeared in various film roles. But it is above all her two men who shaped the public image of her.
Her wedding in 1968 to the Austrian Prince Alfred von Auersperg made her a real princess. Four years later there was a near-catastrophe: On the way home to Kitzbühel, the then 31-year-old was thrown eleven meters into the depths in her car. The actress was taken out of her smashed car with life-threatening injuries.
Heino revealed that he met Hannelore while filming the film “Blue Blooms the Gentian”. But not at the filming location, but at the “Miss Austria” election in Kitzbühel, “where we were both on the jury.”
The Düsseldorf “Jung” from the working-class district of Oberbilk and the princess: The romance between Heino and Hannelore begins in 1977 on the television show “An Evening in Blue”. Heino falls in love with the beautiful woman with long blonde hair.
A year later they come back as a couple. Away from chic and glamor, Hannelore and Heino married in Bad Münstereifel in 1979. They enjoyed their private life there for many years. Most recently they lived there in the Kurhaus.
The couple endured worrying days when Hannelore was taken to hospital with heart problems in 2004 and underwent surgery. She was already expecting to be discharged when the doctors unexpectedly transferred her to the university hospital in Bonn a week later.
There she will have several bypasses placed. How serious the situation is became clear a year later when Heino announced the end of his career: “Hannelore needs me more than ever today,” he says. Later comes his withdrawal from retreat.
Hannelore Kramm is the woman with long blonde hair who always looks perfectly styled. In countless photos, in advertising clips – most recently as a rocker bride dressed in black after her husband’s image change.
Heino assured that the fact that they left the tranquil town of Bad Münstereifel and permanently exchanged it for the view of the Alps at their second residence, Kitzbühel, was not due to the flood disaster that affected Bad Münstereifel. It was due to Hannelore’s health.
