Andrzej Stockinger was one of the most popular Polish actors half a century ago. He went down in the history of Polish cinema and television as an outstanding master of the background, and his “immortality” was ensured by an episode in the cult “Miś” by Stanisław Bareja. The sentence uttered by its protagonist – a boiler room stoker – that “when it is winter, it must be cold”, has entered the colloquial language. Few fans of the artist who died 30 years ago know that he spent his whole life trying to forget what happened to him when he was a teenager.
Andrew Stockinger /From the archive of the National Digital Archive
Andrew Stockinger he was 12 years old when, at the beginning of the Nazi occupation, a drunken German fatally ran over his mother with a car. He saw him die…
Soon after, he and his father were detained by the Gestapo and were sent to the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp, from which they managed to escape after some time.
“They were lucky that it was really the end of the war, when the slightly panicked Germans guarded the prisoners less than before” – said Tomasz Stockinger, recalling his father and grandfather in an interview with the author of the book “Jak u Barei or who said it”.
Andrzej Stockinger: Staying in the camp and escaping from it remained in his psyche forever
After escaping from Konzentrationslager Stutthof, then 16 years old Andrew Stockinger for many days, hungry and cold, he walked from Sztutowo to Warsaw to see on the spot that not even a trace of his house remains!
“Staying in the camp and escaping, breaking through Kashubia, stayed with him forever psyche. I remember more than one moment when it came out of my father, when he got emotional. My father was a slightly mentally broken man…” – he claims Thomas Stockinger.
Andrew Stockinger As a young man he dreamed of becoming a doctor. He was in the second year of medicine at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, when – in order to earn a few zlotys – he got a job in an operetta.
“I used to sing in a band at the Medyków Club, but I didn’t take it seriously. One of my friends, whose father was the coryphaeus in the Lublin operetta, it was called Teatr Muzyczny, told me that I needed a bass for the choir. And that’s how it all started” – he recalled a few years before his death in an interview for the magazine “Kobieta i Życie”.
Andrzej didn’t like singing after a whole day of classes in the dissecting room, so he quit his studies. He joked that he just thought he could do less harm to people standing in front of a microphone than with a scalpel in his hand.
One of the activists of SPATiF (later ZASP), who accidentally saw Stockinger on stage in the role of Literat in “Romance z vaudeville”, persuaded the amateur actor to take an extramural exam. Andrzej Stockinger was 32 years old when he passed the exam and became a professional.
Andrzej Stockinger: He fell in love with a beautiful singer. For the first date he brought… bryndza!
Playing dramatic roles did not satisfy Andrzej’s ambitions, who felt great not only on stage in the theater, but also on the stage.
“In the theater I am “set up”, and in a song I can show my own attitude towards the world, love, people. In the theater I play only villains. Singing is my antidote for theater roles, “he said in an interview with “Panorama”.
The actor owed his popularity and … wife to Estrada. Barbara Barska in the early 1950s she was a member of the female vocal group Sisters Triola (she sang in a trio with her two older sisters, Adrianna and Zofia), Andrzej Stockinger was a member of the Warsaw music group founded during the uprising Four of Chess.
“One day, somewhere on a concert tour in the middle of Poland, one of the Triola Sisters met by chance with one of the Four Shahs, and then they lived happily ever after” – the son of Barbara and Andrzej Stockinger joked in an interview with “Tele-Tygodnia”.
Basia immediately caught Andrzej’s eye, so he invited her on a date, for which he brought… home-made bryndza.
“As you know, on the route you had to fend for yourself and sometimes even cook something. It all started with this bryndza” – said Tomasz Stockinger, talking about the circumstances in which his parents met.
Andrzej Stockinger: He didn’t want to reminisce about the occupation years
Andrzej Stockinger did not hide that he is a happy man and a fulfilled actor. In interviews, he boasted of great ones children – Tomasz and Katarzyna, talked about a wonderful woman with whom he went through life, willingly talked about the roles he played and the songs he sang. Only he did not want to return to the memories of the occupation years… Until the end of his life he could not cope with the demons from the past.
Andrzej Stockinger died 30 years ago, on August 13, 1993.
Andrew Stockinger /From the archive of the National Digital Archive
Andrew Stockinger /From the archive of the National Digital Archive
Thomas Stockinger /Pawel Wrzecion /MWMedia
