Star hairdresser: Udo Walz is dead

Er am afraid of dying, admitted the celebrity hairdresser Udo Walz on his 75th birthday. Just over a year later, Walz is now dead, but without the suffering he dreaded. “Udo fell asleep peacefully at twelve o’clock,” said his husband Carsten Thamm-Walz of “Bild”. After a diabetes shock two weeks ago, he fell into a coma.

This means that the only two hairdressers in Germany who had achieved their own prominence died within just two months. In September, the Munich hairdresser Gerhard Meir, who became famous for the punk hairstyles of Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, died at the age of 65 – surprisingly, as is Udo Walz now. Because despite his advanced age, he worked until the end in his salon on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm.

Walz was born on July 28, 1944 in Waiblingen, Baden-Württemberg, as the son of a truck driver. As was customary back then, he started his career at the age of 14. First he was an intern, then a trainee at a hairdresser in Stuttgart. His teaching result was sobering. He was the third worst of 600 apprentices of the year.

In St. Moritz he called himself “Monsieur Boris”

However, this was not an obstacle to the success that soon began. Walz went to Switzerland, via Zurich he came to a salon in St. Moritz. His boss had him cut there as “Monsieur Boris”, and celebrities came and went in the fashionable winter sports resort.

So Marlene Dietrich came into the salon and let the German do her hair. Walz told the “picture” that the film legend had invited him to a party in a bar, but he was too shy. Hollywood star Rock Hudson also invited him for a drink, and he also turned down. “Nice stupid.”

In any case, Walz did not stay in St. Moritz for long, he moved to Berlin, where he lived until the end. The internationally successful photographer FC Gundlach, with whom Walz was friends and who had his models done by Walz, spurred the economic success.

So the door to the world of the beautiful and rich opened a little further – and Walz clearly knew what they wanted from him. In addition to the well-fitting hairstyle, above all discretion. Romy Schneider was a regular guest for a while. Mostly she came on Saturdays and enjoyed the fact that no paparazzi were waiting for her, he once reported.

“So much for Ms. Merkel: …”

Walz was full of experiences with his customers, but he only let out a little bit of them. He did not want to reveal to the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit” whether Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) also writes text messages while she is doing her hair. “So much for Ms. Merkel: I don’t know any woman who types text messages as quickly as she does.”

Even in her early days as CDU chairwoman, Merkel’s hairstyle was always an issue. “Before she came to me, her hairstyle was called a pot hairstyle – I then started to change her hairstyle,” Walz told the Web.de portal about Merkel’s change of style a few years ago. He also revealed the price of hairdressing: 65 euros for washing and cutting, his usual rate.

Although Walz saw himself primarily as a ladies’ hairdresser, Merkel’s predecessor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) was one of his customers, as well as the former Federal President Johannes Rau – as well as celebrities from Claudia Schiffer to Demi Moore. The fact that the names of his customers became known in spite of all discretion was probably also one of the secrets of Walz, who is also known from numerous television appearances.