Erika Pluhar reflects on ageing and a life in the arts

Austrian writer, singer and actor Erika Pluhar says she has hardly noticed herself getting older. The 87-year-old continues to give concerts and readings, and spoke about ageing at the Hartheim Conference in Alkoven, as well as in an interview with ORF Upper Austria.

“I used to look more beautiful,” Pluhar said in the ORF interview series “Auf ein Wort”. She added that she would not necessarily want to be younger now. “I’m not operated on, and this is my naturally white hair,” she said.

In her new book, “Es war einmal” (“Once upon a time”), named after one of her best-known songs, Pluhar looks back on people and events that have mattered to her.

Born in Vienna in 1939, Pluhar experienced the end of the Second World War in Pfaffstätt, in the Braunau district, and later trained at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. She was part of the Vienna Burgtheater’s ensemble for four decades.

Pluhar was first married to Udo Proksch, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1992 after being convicted of six murders in the Lucona affair. Their daughter, Pluhar’s only child, died at the age of 37 from an asthma attack. In the 1970s, Pluhar was married to artist André Heller.

Pluhar has written in earlier books, and again in “Es war einmal”, that Proksch hit her. “These are simply issues that affect women so deeply,” she said in the interview. She also discussed why her voice sounds so deep and why she tries to live as analog a life as possible.

Pluhar campaigns against far-right extremism and received a Romy award for her lifetime achievement in 2019.