Hugo Egon Balder is a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and comedian

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

. He was born 22 March 1950 in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 to Egon Friedrich Balder (1904–1970) and Gerda Balder, née Schure (1910–1997). Gerda Balder was a Jew who, together with her mother and her son from her first marriage, survived the Theresienstadt

Theresienstadt concentration camp

Theresienstadt concentration camp was a Nazi German ghetto during World War II. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezín , located in what is now the Czech Republic.-History:The fortress of Terezín was constructed between the years 1780 and 1790 by the orders...

 concentration camp.

Balder was a founding member of the Krautrock

Krautrock

Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scenes that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. The term is a result of the English-speaking world's reception of the music at the time and not a reference to any one...

 band Birth Control

Birth Control (band)

Birth Control is a German rock band known for their progressive hard rock sound and provocative album covers.Birth Control formed in the middle of 1968 in Berlin from two other bands, the Earls and the Gents...

 in 1968. He received acting training at a private acting school in Berlin from 1973 to 1976. Following that, he temporarily joined the ensemble of the Berliner Schillertheater. In 1985 he switched to the ensemble of the Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 cabaret Kom(m)ödchen

Kom(m)ödchen

The Komödchen is a cabaret stage in Düsseldorf.The Komödchen was created in 1947 as a political-literary cabaret by Kay and Lore Lorentz. Other participants in the initial program "Positiv dagegen", which had its premiere on March 29, 1947, were Werner Vielhaber, Bernd Nesselhut, Hans Walter...

, where he collaborated with Lore Lorentz

Lore Lorentz

Lore Lorentz was a German cabaret artist/standup comedian.She was born in Mährisch-Ostrau in Austria-Hungary , as Lore Schirner. She studied history, German literature and philosophy in Berlin and Vienna...

 and Harald Schmidt

Harald Schmidt

Harald Franz Schmidt is a German actor, writer, comedian and television entertainer best known as host of two popular German late-night shows.- Early life :...

.

Secondarily, he performed as a pop singer

Singing

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

 and had a notable success with his single "Erna kommt" (1985).

His first roles as a show host were in various radio shows at Radio Luxembourg, until in 1984 he began to appear regularly on TV (RTL

RTL Television

Rtl.de' redirects here. For other uses, see RTL.RTL Television , or simply RTL, is a German commercial television station distributed via cable and satellite along with DVB-T , in larger population centres...

). His popularity is principally based on the shows Alles nichts oder?! and the soft-porn tits-out show Tutti frutti which he hosted from 1988 until 1992 at RTL. As a producer he was involved in the making of "April, April" (hosted by Frank Elstner

Frank Elstner

Frank Elstner, full name Timm Maria Franz Elstner is a German television presenter.Elstner went to school in Rastatt in Germany and gained his first experience in broadcasting as a child when he acted in radio plays for the station then known as Südwestfunk, now as Südwestrundfunk, which served...

) and RTL Samstag Nacht

RTL Samstag Nacht

RTL Samstag Nacht was a comedy show, which ran from 6 November 1993 to 23 May 1998 on the German TV network RTL. RTL Samstag Nacht was the first major comedy show in German television, created after the example of the long-running American show Saturday Night Live and broadcast late on Saturday night...

.

Currently Balder works as the producer and show host of Genial daneben on Sat.1

Sat.1

Sat.1 is a privately owned German television broadcasting station. Sat.1 was the first privately owned television broadcasting station in Germany, having started one day before RTL Television....

.

Balder is divorced (for the fourth time)| and has two children.