In the old district office in Moers, a permanent exhibition illuminates the life and work of the cabaret artist who was born in Moers in 1925 and died in Werfen (Rhein-Sieg-Kreis) in 2005.
"Small arts must encourage courage. If I mix the Christian confidence with the Brecht quote 'Do not fall into anger, for every creature needs help from everyone' and then add a dash of entertainment, then you actually have Hüsch, where he comes from and where he wants to go." He said this in 1997, a year before cancer made its presence felt, to celebrate his anniversary.
At that time, Hüsch had already been on stage for 50 years, or rather: he sat at his organ, pressed a few keys, and accurately turned the pages of his manuscript, one by one. He managed to put on 70 programs in his lifetime. Most are declarations of love to the people and also to his homeland, the Lower Rhine, where city tours are still held in Moers today, tracing the footsteps of the great son. They lead to his grave, but also to a stele dedicated to him in the Hanns-Dieter-Hüsch-Platz.
One of his first songs, which he once performed at the University of Mainz, was called "The Man Who Can't Dance" and early on illustrated how Hüsch knew how to play with his shortcomings. When he was born on May 6, 1925, in Moers, something was wrong with his feet, and young Hanns Dieter was afraid that the Nazis would soon come to take him away. A few painful operations later, things with his feet finally got better.
Hüsch was clever and mischievous, believed in Christian values, and stood up vigorously against all the bourgeois. Nevertheless, in the 60s, he was long scolded by the Left as a clown who trivialized the conditions. A kind of struggle for life unfolded. The fact that "Der Spiegel" never adequately acknowledged him throughout his life bothered him. Hüsch loved people, loved his audience, even if he cleverly disturbed it with fine observations in its heaviness.
In the end, in December 2005, he had no audience anymore. He could no longer send out his self-invented adjutant Hagenbuch to casually check how it looked on the other side, to later report whether it might be more pleasant in the afterlife than in the area between Dinslaken and Moers. Cancer and a stroke kept him in his house in Cologne. He could and would not answer letters from friends and fans anymore. This was understandable but saddened all those who would have liked to hear once more the famous closing words of the 80-year-old Hüsch with which he always modestly escaped the applause: "Goodbye everyone!".
