In his more than 150 stage roles, Merkatz has mainly played characters by Nestroy, Raimund and Shakespeare. Throughout his career, Merkatz has appeared in over 250 film and television productions, making film and local television history.
Karl Merkatz was born on November 17, 1930 as the son of a toolmaker and a weaver in Wiener Neustadt. As a child he was fascinated by the theater and played in an amateur group, but at the request of his parents to learn “a real trade”, he first took an apprenticeship as a carpenter. After completing his apprenticeship, he went to Zurich and from there pursued his goal of becoming an actor. After acting classes in Vienna, among other places, he began studying at Salzburg’s Mozarteum, where he graduated with honors in 1955.
Merkatz had his first stage engagements at the Small Theater in Heilbronn and the Salzburg State Theatre. In Heilbronn he also met his wife Martha Metz, to whom he had been married since 1956. He then went to Germany for a few years, where he worked in the municipal theaters of Nuremberg, in the theaters of the city of Cologne, at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, in Thalia Theater and the Munich Kammerspiele. One of his favorite pieces was “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. At the Burgtheater and Salzburg Festival in 2005 he appeared in “König Ottokar” and in the same year he acted as the poor neighbor in “Jedermann”. He also knew how to impress again and again in Franz Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy.”
Merkatz also participated in operettas and made guest appearances in Hamburg and the Dutch Opera Antwerp. In 1993 he played for the first time in a musical role at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt as “The Man from La Mancha” and later at the Theater an der Wien as the milkman Tevje in “Anatevka”. In 2009, he announced his departure from the theater stage – his great desire to play “King Lear” did not come true. After successfully staging his 2008 cabaret show “Der Blunzenkönig”, the play also hit local theaters in 2015 with Merkatz in the lead role.
He had his breakthrough and formative appearance to date in Reinhard Schwabenitzky’s 1975-79 television series “Ein Echter Wiener geht nicht unter”, based on scripts by Ernst Hinterberger. The role of “Mundl” became one of the most popular television characters of the Second Republic and made Merkatz one of the most popular actors. In 2008, Karl Sackbauer’s success story found a successful sequel in the film “Echte Wiener – Die Sackbauer-Saga”, which was followed in 2010 by “Echte Wiener 2 – Die Deppat’n und die Gspritzt’n”. His second personal role was that of “Bockerer” in Franz Antel’s film series of the same name. In 1982 he was awarded the Filmband in Gold and the German Acting Prize for his role as Franz Bockerer.
The TV series “Der Spritzen-Karli” had 13 episodes. Finally, in 2013, he received the Austrian Film Award for Best Leading Actor for “Begin 80”. But there were also numerous official honors, such as the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, the Gold Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital Vienna or, in 2002, the Grand Gold Medal of Honor for services rendered to the province of Lower Austria.
“So bin ich” is the title of her autobiography published in 2005 (Styria Verlag), “Ein Schamerl needs four knuckles” was the title of her memoirs recorded by Christoph Frühwirth in 2015 (Amalthea Verlag). In an Ö1 “Audio Image”, Merkatz once said, “The word ‘career’ doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. It’s always been about working for myself, entertaining people, making them happy in the best possible way. Sometimes I hope have achieved.”
“Karl Merkatz wrote film and television history in his varied work and was also a great stage actor. But he was not only a great actor, but above all an incredibly multifaceted and lovable person”, said the Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner on the death of Karl Merkatz.