“I thought ‘influencer’ meant a cold,” said Werner, now 89, elongating the vowels so the word sounded like “influenza.”
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It was exactly such funny lines that helped him become a beloved TikTok star in Germany. He belongs to a rapidly growing group of older opinion leaders who have gained great popularity among much younger users.
The content they publish ranges from fashion-related videos known as “Get Ready With Me” to motivational and advice-filled speeches.
His character, Opa Werner or Grandpa Werner, embraced youthful humor and gathered a circle of followers by trying out what German youth like and live by. Viewers loved videos where he tries new flavors and grimaces while going from one café to another.
Opa Werner still hasn’t found a matcha latte he likes. Once he compared the taste of this trendy green drink to freshly cut grass.
His online persona—a friendly grump who, using Gen Z slang, complains about latte prices—has attracted nearly 200,000 followers and gathered over 2.8 million likes. Maybe Werner hates oat milk matcha lattes, but his fans say his love of life is contagious.
“You always know he won’t like it and that he’ll call everything by strange names,” said nineteen-year-old fan Szymon Zurawski, who patiently waited outside a Düsseldorf café to take a photo with the TikTok star.
“When young people interact with older people, they often try to adapt to them, but in his case, it’s the opposite—he tries to understand the younger generation himself,” added Szymon.
26-year-old Amin Anbousi was already a social media veteran when he discovered Werner in April 2025. For years Amin was known as a teenage YouTuber, but after turning just over twenty, he decided to step behind the scenes and take advantage of the lucrative social media industry.
Looking for new ideas, he noticed that older people were becoming popular on social media. Amin had the idea of a new boom of “grandfluencers.” He didn’t have to look far for stars. It turned out that his own mother, Heike Hepperle, transforms in front of the camera into a cheerful, confused but enthusiastic senior.
Retired nurse Heike encouraged her witty friend Werner to participate in the casting.
His email stood out from more than 150 other applicants. In it, the senior explained why he deserved a chance to become an internet star. His application, written in Gen Z slang, won.
“Slang is used when speaking, not writing. And definitely not by someone over 80,” Amin recalled the letter.
“I thought he was crazy, but in a positive way,” he added. “That letter was so special I couldn’t ignore it.”
According to Amin, it also helped that Werner managed to handle the video call that took place later.
When Werner sat down to write that letter, he was trying to overcome the latest tragedy in his life: the death of his wife. In the twilight of their 66-year marriage, according to Werner, illness turned his wife’s personality into a complete opposite. She became pessimistic and critical, and nursing her in her last days required great emotional endurance.
“I don’t even know what happened to her,” the senior said. “I tried to distance myself a bit so I wouldn’t completely disappear.”
He accepted Amin’s invitation to the casting just weeks before his wife’s death. Despite the painful loss, Werner was determined to move forward.
This was not the first time he embraced optimism out of necessity. Werner, whose family came from territory that is now Poland, was born in Berlin when Adolf Hitler was at the height of his power. When the war started, his father was taken into the German army and died in Russia.
As Allied forces fiercely bombed Berlin, he and his brother were among thousands of children evacuated to the countryside—first to then East Prussia, and later to the Sudetenland, lands belonging to Germany during the war, now in the Czech Republic. After Germany’s defeat, young Werner returned to Berlin on foot.
He was still a child when he earned his first money by delivering groceries to neighbors with his little cart. As a teenager, he dismantled electrical wires in ruined houses, which later pushed Werner to become an electrician.
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But life under Russian occupation was “cruel,” he said, mischievously adding: “Much worse than a matcha latte.”
At 18, he fled East Germany to avoid forced enlistment in government police forces. Werner escaped by tricking border guards into thinking he was visiting his grandparents in West Berlin. He wore a suit and rode a bicycle. He never returned.
What followed was an adult life full of twists of fate. He realized that his loud and energetic nature was better suited to sales. There he shone, and the commissions he earned ensured a much more comfortable life for his three children than the one he had in childhood.
However, success did not always follow. Like when he tried to sell bicycles in a town with steep, hilly streets, or when he invested in a Munich construction company that eventually went bankrupt.
“If there was even a straw of hope, I always grabbed it,” Werner said, using a German phrase.
After reaching retirement age, he kept working. He drove a delivery van, sold insurance, and even became a frozen food salesman, offering products door to door.
Today, when he’s not swimming, walking, or filming TikTok videos, he earns extra money as a day trader, closely watching the stock market on his TV screen.
“There always has to be one euro more in my wallet than I spend,” he said.
Still, Werner had to come to terms with the fact that even a comfortable life does not protect against tragedy. In 2013, after returning from abroad, his son died from an undiagnosed illness. He was 53. After this loss, the man had to raise his granddaughter himself.
But the unbreakable optimist is happy to live today in a home where several generations grow up together, which is rare in Germany. Living with his 34-year-old granddaughter and her three children, he says, allows sharing everyday worries.
Most young Germans don’t have the chance to see their grandparents as lively and full of life, said Heike, who films with Werner. Probably that’s why Werner managed to achieve such huge success on social media.
“Many older people isolate themselves from others,” Heike noted. “In Germany, it’s customary—everyone lives only for themselves.”
On his TikTok and Instagram accounts (@deropawerner), Werner used something very rare on social media—authenticity, noted Colin Fernando, a management consultant at the Nuremberg-based company Brand Trust.
Brands know very well that he won’t like their product, but still compete for partnerships with Werner—because sincerity sells well on TikTok, and provocation guarantees attention, he explained.
“Everyone knows it’s staged and that there’s an agency behind it all,” said C. Fernando. “But it still gives the impression that he really is unique.”
Over the past year, amid a whirlwind of events, Werner won an award for a campaign with one of the retail chains and appeared at several festivals. He tried his boldest tricks during spring break in Mallorca, where he guzzled beer from a funnel and partied on a yacht with Oma Heike—the character played by his friend H. Hepperle. Moreover, teaming up with a German musician, he released a true summer dance floor anthem.
On her way to her shift at the emergency department of a Düsseldorf hospital, Evelyn Wilczek loudly listened to this song in her car. The 27-year-old woman said Werner’s videos are an antidote to the opinionated influencers cluttering her news feed.
Grandpa Werner reminds her to live life with a little spark. When Evelyn spotted Werner in Düsseldorf this summer, she admitted she didn’t dare approach him to ask for a photo.
“We often forget that even seniors were once young, had dreams, made mistakes,” the woman said. “It’s nice to see that they have their own life in old age, not just sitting at home grumbling.”
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This article was published in The New York Times.
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