Rainhard Jürgen Fendrich is an Austrian singer, composer, entertainer, and actor. He is one of the most successfulAustropop musicians, and his songs are written in Viennese German. He is very popular in Austria, but less so in other German-speaking countries. In non-German-speaking countries he is little known. His song from 1990, "I Am from Austria" is still popular in Austria.
Early life and education
Rainhard Fendrich, called "Raini" by his friends, attended a Catholic boarding school. By his own admission he was a lazy pupil, and shy. He got his first guitar on his 15th birthday, taught himself how to play and started writing songs. He began to study law, but gave it up to embark on a career as actor and singer.
Career
In 1980, Fendrich performed in the musicals Die Gräfin vom Naschmarkt, in 1982 in Jesus Christ Superstar, Chicago, and he played Jeff Zodiak in the musical Wake Up, which he co-wrote with Harold Faltermeyer in 2002. He has appeared in numerous Austrian and German movies. As an entertainer, he followed Rudi Carrell in the ARDTV showHerzblatt, was the first host of Die Millionenshow, the Austrian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and for a while had his own TV comedy show, Nix Is Fix, produced by ORF and ARD. Fendrich received the Austrian Golden Romy award for TV entertainment. In 1994, 1995 and 2000, he was nominated for the Amadeus Austrian Music Award four times before winning it in 2002. Austrian NEWSmagazine readers voted him "Best Entertainer of the Decade" in same year. In 1997, he gathered his friends, the Austrian singer-guitarists, Georg Danzer and Wolfgang Ambros for a beneficial concert to benefit homeless people. Their success was overwhelming, and the three individualists showed up on stage as Austria3 from that day, until they decided to stop that project in 2006. However, at Georg Danzer's comeback concert in Vienna on 16 April 2007, they met again for a few songs, and even "thought" in public about re-uniting in 2008. This can not happen, as Danzer died of lung cancer on 21 June 2007. The concert on Donauinselfest which Fendrich gave "instead and for Georg Danzer" who a few weeks before the event had to refuse because of his rapidly progressing disease, attracted 200.000 fans on 23 June 2007.
