Biography
Frank-Markus Barwasser, born February 16, 1960, in Würzburg, finished an apprenticeship at Würzburg"s newspaper Main-Post and studied political science, ethnology, and history in Munich and Salamanca, Spain. At the beginning of the 1980s, Barwasser gathered stage experience as a member of a puppet theatre. During the mid-1980s, he became one of the founders of Bamberg"s Kulturforum "Palais Schrottenberg", which marked the start of Barwasser"s career as a political satirist.
After an interlude as a radio reporter for Bayerischer Rundfunk at the beginning of the 1990s, Barwasser started to work for Bayern 3 and got a regular comic radio gloss. In this show, Barwasser developed the fictional character "Erwin Pelzig", that soon became a cult figure. Besides his radio show, Pelzig/Barwasser did several stage performances and starred in the BR produced TV show "Pelzig unterhält sich". Barwasser has won numerous awards for his Pelzig shows, including the 2001 German cabaret award, the 2004 German minor arts award, and the 2006 Bavarian television award. In the winter of 2007, Barwasser finally made the leap to the big screen and starred – as Pelzig, of course – in the comedy "Vorne ist verdammt weit weg", directed by his old theatre fellow Thomas Heinemann.