The last journey of an artist’s soul: the terminally ill Rosenheim painter wants to die in Hawaii

• fromLudwig Simeth

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The Rosenheim artist Franz Lautenschläger, who is also known to many by his stage name “Francisco Luxembourg”, has a great wish: The terminally ill 73-year-old wants to go back to Hawaii – and take his last breath there.

Rosenheim – His life is as colorful as his pictures: The story of Franz Lautenschläger (73) from Rosenheim could be filmed.

As an artist and bon vivant, woman lover and understanding woman, he always commuted between worlds. Great advertising guru of the Munich crowd in the 70s, German wellness pope in the late 80s, admired pop art painter on the dream beaches of Hawaii, where he wrote all kinds of beauties of nature on paper in the 90s as “Francisco Luxembourg”, the artist’s name brought.

Also read: Franz Lautenschläger – A “lifesaver” in the wrong film

But as is so often the case with adventurers and colorful birds, the life film unfortunately does not have a happy ending. The money, the women and the friends are gone, the youth anyway – and unfortunately also the health. He has been suffering from an incurable form of colon cancer for almost a year, says Lautenschläger, who can only struggle to stand on his feet and needs a stick to walk. He’s also had a minor stroke.

“I just have no more strength”

“I just don’t have any more strength. I feel that it will soon be over, ”complains the native of Oberaudorf. Because there is seldom a high pension for bon vivants, he somehow has to stay afloat in a small rented apartment in the Rosenheim district of Kastenau. In the gray Bavarian autumn of 2019, only the colorful pictures from back then that hang on the walls keep him company.

With a heavy heart, he now wants to part with the paintings – for the very last big trip: “I want to go back to my second home, to Hawaii, to die,” says Lautenschläger. There is no other way to scrape together the money for the flight across the Atlantic: He has to sell the pictures, preferably all 50 at once, to an art lover: “I’m running out of time and I’m selling them below their value – I promise . “

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What value his works have, whether it is really art or just kitsch – you can argue about that as always. The tastes are different. But for Francisco Luxembourg there is no doubt: his colorful pictures are not only “an expression of joie de vivre, beauty, lightness and cosmopolitanism”. They also stand for an art form that he created himself: Romantic Pop Art – “a genre that I even registered and protected in the USA.”

Also read: “Until the brush falls out of my hand” – Peter Casagrande and the large format

But he didn’t get rich in two decades in Hawaii or during a two-year interlude in California – for the sake of a colored dancer from Los Angeles.

Faustgroßer Tumor

Ten years ago I went back to Bavaria, even then by necessity, because of health. After all, the tumor the size of a fist, which had given him trouble on the island, turned out to be benign during the operation in Munich-Perlach.

So the ailing returnees quickly got back on their feet at home. As a freelance artist, the painter Luxembourg in Rosenheim had no luck with his ideas. He was never able to build on the golden years of the book author Lautenschläger, who was celebrated in magazines and newspapers as the founder of the wellness movement.

Like a modern Don Quixote

Like a modern Don Quixote he fought against windmills. His books with titles such as “Wellness: Relaxed from the crisis” or “Wellness for managers: Healthy through the toxic years” are still available for purchase on the Internet today. “But only the publishers earn from it, I don’t get a cent more.”

He was never a businessman and a diplomat. And another big weakness: women. Just as the man with the lion’s mane adores her beauty, so he abhors violence against women. So he interferes. “Anyone who stood up to the Latino gangs in the notorious Echo Park in Los Angeles must show moral courage here in Bavaria,” he says.

Also read: The Pacific view – highly political art in Hawaii

But like Don Quixote in the Mancha, Lautenschläger received nothing but a beating in Rosenheim when he played the noble knight and savior, as in Honolulu or LA. Like in autumn 2014, when three armed police officers suddenly rang the doorbell, shoved a judicial search warrant under his nose, turned the apartment upside down and confiscated the laptop. Lautenschläger had only prevented a neighbor girl (17) from being beaten up again and again from the most difficult circumstances. The OVB home newspapers reported extensively on the case. The savior felt like he was in the wrong movie.

The proceedings against him were quickly dropped. But once again he couldn’t buy anything from it. Lautenschläger is still waiting for the lifesaver medal. After the wave of refugees in 2015, when there were headlines because some asylum seekers – also in the region – raped or even killed women and girls, he offended with uncomfortable statements and poems. The painter wrote – to Merkel, Seehofer, the mayor. The 73-year-old says in a pathetic fashion: “A people who cannot or do not want to protect their wives will lose their honor and perish.”

Its end should be colorful

But Lautenschläger will not experience that again. Its end should be colorful – on the beach in Hawaii, which has already inspired many artist souls. But the sea, the sun and the horizon are still a long way off. Before doing this, he has to look at the mobile phone display. Anyone interested in his Pop Art pictures can contact him on 0151/55 88 66 27. He will surely answer.

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