Frank Elstner Verstorben: Frank Elstner served as a radio and television host and moderator in Luxemburg. His other talents include showmanship and creation of shows; with bets he discovered one of the most successful in Europe.
Frank Elstner Verstorben: Life and work are intertwined
Elstner was born in Linz a der Donau, Austria, to Erich Elstner and Hilde Engel-Elstner, two famous Austrian actors. They were raised by a Sudetendeutsche father who worked at the Protektorat Böhmen and Mähren theatre in Brünn as a Oberspielleiter.
Frank Elstner was there at the Todesmarsch of the Brünner Vertriebenen to Vienna when he was a little child. Once they arrived in Berlin, the family settled there. As a result of this, the family moved to Cologne. Baden-Baden and Rastatt were Frank Elstner’s home base from the beginning of the Fifties.
He attended the Ludwig-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Rastatt before being expelled from school. For the first time in his life after moving to Baden-Baden at the age of 14, he didn’t get his high school diploma. As a child, he was a minister. In the DPSG, he served as a Pfadfinder.
While working for the Südwestfunk in Hörspielen, Elstner made his first impressions of medium-format broadcasting. As an example, in 1950, he used these words to voice the character of Bambi in a radio play. It was impossible for him to pursue his dream of studying theatre in Freiburg due to the lack of funds.
When Elstner started working for Radio Luxemburg in 1964, people began to recognise him as a moderator, first as the station’s chief speaker, and then as the director of programming for the Fröhlichen Wellen (bis 1983).
Radio Luxemburg’s on-air personalities all worked under their first names, thus Elstner had to choose another moniker in order to avoid confusion with the already-existing Tom on-air personality. This is how he decided to go by his brothers’ name, Frank.
He moderated Luxemburger Funkkantine, which he co-hosted with other Sender stars including Dieter Thomas Heck, Jochen Pützenbacher, and Helga Guitton, as well as some of Elstner’s most popular shows that became brand ambassadors for the station.
Gerd Bacher from the ORF hired Elstner as a consultant for the building of 3 in Vienna for a period of time in the early 1990s.As a quiz show contestant, Elstner made many appearances as a stage actor in the series Geschichten aus Adorf (1964–68), which launched his television career.
Play without Boundaries, which he moderated under the tutelage of his former boss at Radio Luxemburg, Camillo Felgen, made him well-known. Later, in the 1970s, followed Die Montagsmaler (1974–1979) by Sigi Harreis, which was successfully continued by Harreis (until 1996).
Elstner had previously in Regionalfernsehen des Südwestfunks (1969–1973) helmed a predecessor under the title Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich moderiert.In 1981, Elstner Wetten, dass..?, which is now regarded as one of the most successful shows in Europe, was discovered.
Thomas Gottschalk took up the role of moderator from him 39 times between 1981 and 1987. On June 18, 2011, Elstner took over the moderation of a wager for the last time during the summer broadcast of Wetten, that…? on Mallorca. In April 2014, at the conclusion of the 212nd episode of Wetten, that…?, Gottschalk’s successor,
Markus Lanz, announced that the show will be suspended for the remainder of the year after three more episodes. Elstner and Gottschalk should appear as honorary guests in the last episode. This was later retracted by the ZDF.
Elstner also created new show formats for the ZDF. He interviewed 138 Nobel laureates for the television show Die Stillen Stars. When the Nase vorn and Elstner and the Detektives’ initial estimates and performance fell short of expectations.
He turned to the RTL-Fernsehen, including the German version of the quiz show Jeopardy!. In addition, he served as a moderator for RTL in the 1990s. Elstnertainment developed Elstner Sendeformate, which he offered to both public and private broadcasters.
