Joachim Kaps

Jovial-faced Joachim Kaps was born in Görlitz, Saxony in 1952. He was a decathlete for seven years at the Children's Youth and Sports School in Dresden-Klotzsche. As a result he became strong, nimble and an excellent dancer. He studied acting at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. From 1976 to 1979 he worked in Südthüringisches Staatstheater in Meiningen, where he played 27 different roles over three seasons. In 1976 he married his wife Helga, whom he met at a concert in his home town of Görlitz. In 1979 he joined the pantomime ensemble at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. At the same time he was a guest player at the Volksbühne Berlin on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. In 1980 he had a daughter, Susanne, who grew up to be a voice actor like her father. Since his first screen appearance in 'Wenn einer was versprochen hat' he has had over two hundred television roles. In 1982, he appeared on the children's show 'Brummkreisel', where he played the host Achim (an abbreviation of his own name), a man in red dungarees who interacts with the audience on a regular basis, reads stories to them, plays games with them and hangs out with his eager but sometimes unruly group of friends. Throughout the Eighties he starred in the annual comedy series 'Ferienheim Bergkristall', where he played Hans-Günther Koch, a sports student who ends up working at a mountain lodge as a ski instructor after initially being mistaken for a chef, and later marries the brassy cleaner Susanne Pieper (Marita Gerasch). Although he wasn't conventionally handsome, Kaps was a charismatic romantic lead, with friendly brown eyes and a boyish smile. This alongside his lean, muscular figure, made him something of a sex symbol; in 'Urlaub mit Nackenstützen' he appeared in a pair of underwear. Thanks to his distinctive voice, Kaps had a prestigious career as a voice actor, doing dubs for film and television, radio plays, audio books and radio commercials. Although Kaps originated most of his own roles, such as Jake in the German dub of 'The Rescuers Down Under', Fred in 'Bibi and Tina', Jacob in the German dub of 'Wunschpunsch' and Scoutmaster Lumpus in the German dub of 'Camp Lazlo', he redubbed or replaced actors in a handful of others. For the 1993 dub of 'The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad', he voiced J. Thaddeus Toad, who was voiced in the earlier dub by Wolfgang Ziffer. In 2000 he replaced Wolfgang Kühne as the voice of Tigger in Disney's 'Winnie The Pooh' films. In 2015, he was chosen by the German public to voice Squidward Tentacles in the German dub of 'SpongeBob SquarePants' after Squidward's original German voice, Eberhard Prüter, died of an illness in October 2014. Kaps has worked at the 'Criminal Theatre' in Berlin since 2006 and has appeared at the annual Krabat Festival since 2012. He makes public appearances as Achim from 'Brummkreisel' to this day, at charity events and in live family shows.