Cindy from Marzahn net worth in 2023 Career & Relationship
| Estimated value: | €7 million |
|---|---|
| Age: | 50 |
| Born: | 11/18/1971 |
| Country of origin: | Luckenwalde, Germany |
| Source of Wealth: | comedian |
| Last updated: | 2021 |
Short introduction
She likes dogs, has a boat license and likes to spend her free time with her mother over a glass of eggnog in the allotment garden. Ilka Bessin has remained completely normal, even if she admits that success used to go a little to her head. No wonder: she is one of the most popular comedians in Germany. Her path to becoming a superstar was anything but easy at first.
early life
Ilka Bessin was born in 1971 in Luckenwalde, Brandenburg, in the former GDR. Her father is a long-distance driver and her mother contributes to the family income as a seamstress. Ilka’s childhood was not easy. She is being teased. Her father beats her.
She wants to be a clown. But after school, her path first leads to the canteen kitchen of a state-owned ball bearing factory. There she is training to be a cook and provides around 1,000 employees with hot meals every day. When the company was privatized after reunification, the job came to an abrupt end. The company closes and Ilka has to reorientate herself. She is now a hotel manager, waiters in numerous restaurants and cafés, and even rises to become the managing director of a catering business. But then she is released, illegally. The labor court is on her side, she could return to her former post, but she no longer wants to. Instead, she finds work on the cruise ship AIDA, entertaining travelers with a colorful animation program.
Then Ilka’s life seems to get out of joint. After her time on the AIDA, she returns to Berlin and becomes unemployed. It’s not that easy to find a job that suits her. For 4 years she lived on Hartz IV, trying to keep her head above water with telephone sex. 200 applications and two suicide attempts later, she finally tried again in 2005 and called the Quatsch Comedy Club in the Friedrichspalast in Berlin.
Career
Founded in 1997 by moderator Thomas Hermanns, the Quatsch Comedy Club is the cornerstone of many artists’ careers. It offers newcomers the chance to prove themselves in a talent competition.
When Ilka calls there, all she really wants to do is work as a waiter in the club and earn some extra money in addition to unemployment benefits. But the man on the phone, Thomas Schrode, is not responsible for the catering at all, but recruits new talent for the show stage. He finds Ilka’s way of speaking funny and asks her if she would like to take part in the talent competition.
Ilka thinks up a text that should fill a short appearance, works on an idea for a stage character. This is the hour of birth of Ilka’s alter ego: Cindy from Marzahn, the “Princess of the prefabricated building”. In a funny, exaggerated and self-deprecating way, the figure represents the prototype of the average welfare recipient in East Berlin. A real Berliner snout full of unfulfilled dreams and caught in the adversities of life. In addition, a bright pink jogging suit, a diadem on the straw-blonde curly head, the eyes excessively covered with make-up. One does not trust Ilka that she will inspire the audience with this grotesque presentation. Nevertheless, she manages to make the audience laugh and even wins the young talent award.
Ilka Bessin remains Cindy from Marzahn and her career is going uphill. Appearances on Stefan Raab’s TV Total and several tours with Ilka’s own stage program follow. Then the RTL broadcaster gives her a TV show called “Cindy from Marzahn and the young wild ones”. You can also see her in guest appearances in the improvisation show “Schillerstraße” and as a supporting actress in various German film productions. She also assists Markus Lanz in “Wetten dass…?” and moderates the program “Celebrity Big Brother” together with Oliver Pocher. Ilka is an integral part of television. And she always embodies – with the exception of a few appearances where she shows herself as Ilka without make-up – as the funny Cindy from Marzahn.
2016, a little more than 10 years after her success in the Quatsch Comedy Club, then the cut. Ilka’s father, now in need of nursing care and suffering from dementia, dies. Although he was not always affectionate towards Ilka, the two are reconciled before his death. Ilka becomes more serious and begins to take an interest in important issues such as child poverty and people in financial crises. She wants to develop further and knows that all of this no longer suits Cindy, who has meant so much to her over the years. Ilka decides to finally drop the masquerade and from now on show herself to the public as she is, even posing naked for the magazine “Gala”. And she finds out: The shitstorm doesn’t happen. The audience still loves them, with all their corners, edges and curves.
RTL books them for various TV formats on the subject of “social injustice in Germany”. In 2018 she wrote a book about her life with depth and feeling. “Schminkt” climbs to the top of the Amazon bestseller list, is published as an audio book (read by her in the Berlin dialect) and is now to be filmed by Matthias Schweighöfer – with Ilka in the adult lead role. And there is another tour, without Cindy but with Ilka, this time completely natural and slimmer, but still sarcastic and funny as usual.
Things are going well in my private life too. Ilka got engaged in 2018 and now lives in Berlin Wilmersdorf.
Career highlights
Going from welfare recipient to millionaire in just a few years – this must have been Ilka Bessin’s personal highlight. Even the New York Times wrote about her. This meant that Ilka Bessin as Cindy from Marzahn was even allowed to perform in front of 200 spectators in a small comedy club called “Carolines” near Times Square in 2014. She was awarded the German Comedy Prize six times, the Quatsch Comedy Club Kleinkunstpreis twice, and the Golden Camera and Bravo Otto once each – to name just a few.
Famous quotes
Ilka Bessin is known for her loose mouth and that’s why she’s so popular with her audience. Often discussed, both on stage and privately: age and weight problems. Ilka Bessin is relaxed about both: “Nothing has changed,” she says of her 50th birthday in a few years, “except that I get out of bed more slowly in the morning. Have fun, go crazy no matter how old you are.” And on the subject of curves, she truthfully explains: “The sea doesn’t give a shit if you have a bikini body or not.”
Amazing Facts
Ilka Bessin creates her own fashion. There are already two collections for women from size 42 upwards. Ilka makes sure that the quality is impeccable and the working conditions during production are good. This also explains the fact that her fashion cannot compete with the cheap offers of the big discounters in terms of price, but it is still affordable. Fashionable blazers, blouses, trench coats and women’s dresses for business women or for everyday use can be purchased from the online shop. Only one piece of clothing is missing from Ilka’s range: a pink jogging suit.
| Estimated value: | €7 million |
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