Rainhard Fendrich

Rainhard Jürgen Fendrich (born 27 February 1955, in Vienna) is an Austrian singer, composer, entertainer, and actor. He is one of the most successful Austropop musicians, and his songs are written in Viennese German. He is very popular in Austria, but less so in other German-speaking countries. In non-German-speaking countries he is little known. His song from 1990, "I Am from Austria" (its lyrics, except for the title, are in Viennese German) is still popular in Austria.
Early life and education.
Fendrich's mother was a Sudeten German while his father's family originated from Serbia. His father was a mechanical engineer, his mother a model. He has a brother, Harald Fendrich, who is six years younger than him and also a musician who played the bass guitar in his band and is now part of WIR4 (Ulli Bäer, Gary Lux, Harry Stampfer). At the age of ten, Fendrich was sent to a Catholic boarding school, where he lived until the age of 17. At the boarding school he was an altar boy and sang in the choir. His piano lessons were cancelled because he was too bad at mathematics. According to his own statements, he thought he was "chubby" and not very attractive as a child. When he got a guitar at the age of 15, he taught himself the chords and also began to write lyrics. Frustrating experiences with girls at that time find their expression later, for example in the songs Cyrano (1991) or Frieda (2001). He dropped out of law school in order to finance acting and singing lessons by working various jobs.
Career.
In 1980, Fendrich performed in the musicals "Die Gräfin vom Naschmarkt", in 1982 in "Jesus Christ Superstar", "Chicago" (Billy Flynn, 1998), and he played Jeff Zodiak in the musical "Wake Up", which he co-wrote with Harold Faltermeyer (and which failed) in 2002 (all of those in Vienna, Austria). He has appeared in numerous Austrian and German movies.
As an entertainer, he followed Rudi Carrell in the ARD TV show "Herzblatt", was the first host of "Die Millionenshow", the Austrian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", and for a while had his own TV comedy show, "Nix Is Fix", produced by ORF and ARD.
Fendrich received the Austrian Golden Romy award for TV entertainment. In 1994, 1995 and 2000, he was nominated for the Amadeus Austrian Music Award four times before winning it in 2002. Austrian "NEWS" magazine readers voted him "Best Entertainer of the Decade" in same year.
In 1997, he gathered his friends, the Austrian singer-guitarists, Georg Danzer and Wolfgang Ambros for a beneficial concert to benefit homeless people. Their success was overwhelming, and the three individualists showed up on stage as Austria3 from that day, until they decided to stop that project in 2006. However, at Georg Danzer's comeback concert in Vienna on 16 April 2007, they met again for a few songs, and even "thought" in public about re-uniting in 2008. This can not happen, as Danzer died of lung cancer on 21 June 2007.
The concert on Donauinselfest which Fendrich gave "instead and for Georg Danzer" who a few weeks before the event had to refuse because of his rapidly progressing disease, attracted 200.000 fans on 23 June 2007.