She is sticking to that. She is no longer seen on screen, but she continues to present the “JosefStadtgespräche” live once a month during the season. Klinger will be 80 next Thursday.
Eva Maria Klinger was born on August 8, 1944 in Vienna and studied theater and German. In 1967, she won a competition for ORF television announcers and achieved widespread fame as an “announcer.” “I was a nice, young, obviously relatively telegenic girl of 22. Soon I was always considered blonde and sweet. That bothered me, of course, because I thought I was not only sweet, I could also think and talk. But nobody at ORF was interested in that at the time. Back then, women were either cleaning ladies, secretaries or speaking dummies,” she recalls in an APA interview.
“The ORF was simply a reflection of society”
In 1970, she earned her doctorate with her thesis “Attila Hörbiger. The development of a character actor”. However, “nothing changed in her work at the ORF. That only happened in the course of the 1970s with the women’s movement. The ORF was simply a reflection of society.”
In addition to her work as a speaker, she was able to work in Studio Vienna. “One of my teachers was Max Eissler (1929-2002, note). I was able to make my first television contributions under him. But I actually wanted to work in the cultural department and made cultural contributions in Studio Vienna – for example about the preservation of the old town on Spittelberg.” After proving herself as a contribution designer, she moved to the cultural department of the radio station Ö1 in 1984. “I stayed there for almost eight years and learned a lot in a very pleasant and factual atmosphere.”
In 1992 she returned to television
In 1992 she returned to television, hosted the magazines “Achtung Kultur” and “K 1” and created numerous reports, documentaries and portraits – for example about Claus Peymann and Klaus Maria Brandauer. In 2015, a few months after his death, she dedicated the sensitive biography “Nie am Ziel” to the actor and theater director Helmuth Lohner. As a reporter, her passion was theater – which she incorporated into her long-term work as a juror for the Nestroy Theater Prize as well as into her “JosefStadtgespräche”, which she has conducted once a month with artists from the Theater in der Josefstadt since 2006.
The passionate golfer will spend her birthday with her son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren on the French Atlantic coast. As an “active sporty holiday”, as she assures us. Also to get fit for the next theater season.