Felix Kammerer on Rowing, Pain, and His New Movie Adams Acht

Transforming Into an Olympic Rowing Champion

Kammerer traded the sets that defined his role in All Quiet on the Western Front for a very different kind of physical confinement: the narrow shell of a racing boat. In Adams Acht, directed toward the silver screen, the narrative tracks how former boxer Karl Adam—played by Oliver Masucci—transformed a group of young outsiders into an elite rowing eight that secured an unexpected gold medal at the 1960 Olympics.

To embody Hans Lenk, who transitioned from athletic dominance to become one of Germany’s most influential philosophers, Kammerer underwent a grueling physical transformation. Working alongside state champions and Olympians, the actor trained for seven months, consumed massive quantities of protein shakes, and packed on roughly ten kilograms of muscle mass while battling severe sunburn and persistent muscle soreness.

Balancing these punishing workouts with the demands of fatherhood—caring for an eight-month-old child at home—proved uniquely exhausting. “My arms had enough to do,” Kammerer said in a video interview, noting that he would never willingly repeat the experience.

The Mental Breaking Point of Elite Athletics

When asked what separated him from actual Olympians, Kammerer pointed squarely to psychological endurance rather than raw physical capacity. Conversations with professional athletes revealed that competing at the highest tier relies entirely on mental fortitude.

Rowing at an elite level demands pushing the human body past the threshold where it begins sending emergency survival signals. Kammerer observed that athletes experience a sensation akin to dying when effort stretches into potential tissue damage. The competitors who ultimately win gold are those capable of overriding these biological alarms and ignoring the severe pain.

This relentless intensity made the sport largely incompatible with Kammerer’s personal preferences. While he has previously experimented with fencing, swimming, climbing, cycling, gymnastics, and dancing, he maintains no natural drive toward continuous physical movement, visiting the gym strictly when required for specific film roles.

Philosophy, Rowing, and Looking Backward

The unusual trajectory of Hans Lenk—moving from high-performance athletics to academic philosophy—offers a compelling study in contrasts. Kammerer highlights that both disciplines share a fundamental core of elite exertion, applying maximum rigor either physically or intellectually.

Reflecting on the metaphor inherent to the sport, Kammerer points out a striking parallel between competitive rowing and human existence. Rowers sit with their backs to the direction of travel, moving backward while staring solely toward the stern of the boat. Humanity similarly exerts immense labor striving forward without ever seeing the destination, leaving only the past visible in our wake.

Regarding Karl Adam’s coaching philosophy of the “matured athlete,” Kammerer expresses mixed views. While supporting the empowerment of athletes to make their own decisions, he firmly rejects the notion of leaving performance-enhancing substances to individual discretion. He condemns events like the Enhanced Games, which permit doping, arguing that such substances inherently damage and injure the body.