The legendary Munich film critic Bunke: She was very free in the media

She was adept at fine perforation lines and solitaire among film and television critics. She was so appreciated and feared, that even self-confident giants like producer Bernd Ischinger got on their knees before her eyes. When did he review his movie? Brooklyn’s last exit He had read, written by Bunke in Munich evening newsThis was the “worst moment” of his career. Ponkie is not just a cheerful nickname for the great lady of film criticism, which she earned as a student in German studies and journalism. Over the decades, Ponkie has become a brand for honest and informed opinions characterized by a deep love of the film’s subject matter. Since 1956, Ilse Kümpfel-Schliekmann has been writing under this signature in the Features section of evening news. The second part of the family name is attributed to a tennis player who soon disappeared from Mrs. Compville’s life. But the name Ponkie has survived and is entirely responsible for the legendary fame of this newspaper’s cultural section.

As an always-remaining freelance journalist, Bunke did not acquire an incorruptible power of judgment and verbal power, which some fear and which some, for example Herbert Ashtenbusch or Rainer Werner Fassbinder, have helped defend against the main defenders. Bunky did not mess with spectacle and falsehood. She always kept her distance, even if she brought Helmut Fischer to the AZ feature department as a reviewer before his acting career.

Ponkie’s life was a life with a TV screen, later with a video recorder, and always with discipline

By the way, it has also become a trademark of Munich, at least for cultural Munich, and therefore it is logical that the former culture-loving mayor of the city, Christian Ude, frankly admitted on the occasion of an outstanding birthday: “Bunki I love you!

The mother of three, and even the great-grandmother in the end, lived such love and respect not only from the people for whom she wrote the riots with a sharp pen. Cultural institutions of the more sober type also praised the uniqueness of Bunky. She was honored with the Schwabing Art Prize (although she lived in Solln), the Adolf Grimme Prize, the Wilhelm Hoegner Prize for her “services in the field of freedom rights” and the One Future Prize at the 2013 Munich Film Festival. She is quietly pleased with such an honor. But she definitely smiled like Thomas Gottschalk in her evening news He congratulated her on her seventy-fifth birthday with an article and admitted (which, of course, not to him) that he takes her “seriously and takes what you write very seriously.”

This has been and remains especially true for public television, Ponkie time and time again and not just in evening news Lift the mirror. For example, she warned of a “race against illiteracy” because ARD and ZDF “revealed several years ago that people are just for them.” MusikantenstadlAnd successful review The Comedy Sack Salmon. Bunky’s conclusion: ‘If you don’t have a tomato in your eyes, you can calculate that something like this is an act of long-term self-destruction. “

Bunky’s Lips It was a life with a TV screen, later with a video recorder, and then with all the possible storage technologies of the modern era. And a life of strict discipline, given that she passed the verdict for many years: only one TV-free day a week. However, Bunky also manages to lead a life with Cake, with the family, with a calm that cannot be learned, but only admired. Anyone who’s ever had a marble bun at her home has seen Bunky a caring, loving, self-contained lady without the usual distance-saving sunglasses.

Open the detail view

On Sunday around 12 a.m., SZ received an email from Ponkie’s son, Uli Kümpfel. On behalf of his brothers, he announced that on December 30, he “slept peacefully with his family.” She was 95 years old.