Big double celebration in Emden: In addition to the Ottifanten’s 50th anniversary, the city in East Frisia also celebrated the 75th birthday of its most famous son. According to a report by NDR, the comedian Otto Waalkes also insisted on giving a free open-air concert with the Emden band Beatstones on Monday on the occasion of his festival in the city garden in front of the town hall. The honorary citizen of Emden also threw numerous Ottifants into the audience.
The whole of Emden had been in Otto fever for days, so in addition to the concert there was also a small fair. Numerous retailers have already decorated their shop windows with Ottifants and other Otto Waalkes devotional items. Waalkes himself, according to the report, of course thanked the organizers and said he was thrilled by the response from his hometown.
Since the 1970s, Waalkes has developed the idiosyncratic, drawn interpretation of elephants into his strongest trademark. An Ottifant appeared for the first time on a record cover in 1973. The idea for this came from his school days, when he wanted to make a portrait of himself, but failed. This looked like an elephant – an ottifant.
Otto Waalkes was born on July 22, 1948 in Emden. After his childhood and youth, he finally moved from East Frisia to the Hanseatic city of Hamburg. From there he started his great career as a comedian, musician and actor. To this day he lives in the metropolis on the Elbe, but never denied his origins and repeatedly discussed his hometown of Emden in his work. In Emden, since 1987, there has also been the so-called “Dat Otto Huus”, a mixture of museum, shop and holiday apartments, in a prominent place in the pedestrian zone, where Otto fans have always come in their thousands every year.
