For the 75th birthday
Updated on 29.08.2024, 10:56
Werner Mang is a cosmetic surgeon and director of the Bodenseeklinik. © dpa / Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa
Götz George’s nose made him a name. Since then, Germany’s most famous cosmetic surgeon has operated and polarized himself into the spotlight again and again. He learned a lesson the hard way.
“It’s still a taboo subject,” says Mang. At the Bodenseeklinik, patients are also checked in under a false name so that they can be beautified unnoticed.
Hardly anyone has been able to use this mixture of star airs and secrecy as well as Mang in recent years. With his pithy statements – whether about his field of expertise or about citizens’ income, meritocracy and abstinence from meat – he is a regular guest on talk shows, can be read in newspapers and seen on television. He has been photographed with celebrities such as Costa Cordalis, Roberto Blanco and Fritz Wepper. On the other hand, there is mainly speculation about his famous patients.
Werner Mang with a painting of himself in his office. © dpa / Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa
Plastic surgeon Werner Mang: Using celebrities to become famous
He often promotes his clinic in Lindau, with its picturesque view of the Swiss shore of Lake Constance, as a luxury destination for anyone who wants to improve their appearance. Mang has made a millionaire out of the beauty business – and made him a celebrity himself.
On his 75th birthday, Mang looks back on a successful career that really took off when, as an assistant doctor, he straightened the nose of an actor named Götz George who had suffered an accident on set and had broken it. Mang expanded his Bodensee clinic into an institution known throughout Europe, took over other beauty clinics, published books and restored houses on the island of Lindau.
Penalty order for bodily harm as low point
But the steep rise was not without conflicts and setbacks. The low point for Mang came in 2013, when he was sentenced to a fine for bodily harm. He had let a plastic surgeon operate on him alone at the Bodensee Clinic, even though the surgeon did not have a valid license to do so at the time.
More than ten years later, Mang still emphasizes that no patients were harmed as a result. But he admits that he made a mistake when hiring the doctor. “I simply made the mistake of not looking at the references,” says Mang. At the time, he was responsible for everything at the Bodenseeklinik himself – the staff, the operations, the administration, the finances. The self-made millionaire’s own business had grown too much for him.
The next generation is already in the starting blocks
But he has learned his lesson, Mang stresses. “When you’re at the top, you have to accept defeats, but you have to get up again – and carry on.” Above all, he has distributed the organizational issues in the clinic’s operations across different shoulders. He now concentrates largely on treating patients himself, and has thinned out his weekly schedule somewhat in the afternoons.
But Mang thinks it is out of the question that he could put down his scalpel and syringe at 75. “My life is the operating room,” he says. “That keeps me young.” He is not shaking, he is not shaky – “I will be going full throttle for the next five years.” He wants to work as long as he can – even if his daughter Gloria, as the clinic’s manager, board member of the operating company and saleswoman of her own cosmetics line, already seems to be prepared to take over.
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Mang sees himself as a pioneer – others do not
If you ask about Mang’s importance for his professional field, you get very different opinions. He describes himself as a pioneer in the field of cosmetic surgery and the author of international standard works. The German Society for Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery (DGPRÄC) is much more cautious.
“Mr. Mang plays no professional role in the further development and publication of medical findings or in further training in the field of plastic surgery in Germany or, as far as we know, abroad,” says board member Nuri Alamuti. “We would not describe him as a pioneer in this context.” The fact that Mang is so well known is mainly due to his media presence. He also does not meet the requirements to be a member of the association.
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