Barbara Geier: The Opa Werner energy

TEXT & PHOTOS: BARBARA GEIER

Let’s start the New Year (2026, blimey!) by meeting Opa Werner (Grandpa Werner), or @deropawerner, as you’ll find him on Instagram. The 88-year-old pensioner, originally from Berlin and now living in Dortmund, has become a German social media sensation since his withering verdict after his first encounter with iced matcha latte – or as he calls it, Matsche Latsche – went viral last August. He has now around 100,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok and is on a mission “to test every Matsche Latsche in Germany until I find one I like.”

It might take a while to complete this task, based on his (hilarious!) comments after getting his first taste of the Gen Z favourite: “This tastes like cardboard. Did you put a tissue in there?” going on to comparing it to “food poisoning” and casually insulting one of Germany’s major mineral water brand by saying “I always thought Gerolsteiner is the worst thing but this beats it,” all delivered in an unmistakable Berlin dialect that make his deadpan comments all the better.

His social media followers, most of them probably the age of his grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, love it and Opa Werner’s unfiltered verdicts have made the pensioner an internet star. It all started with a friend’s son in his mid-twenties, who is the co-founder of a video production company and had the idea to turn Werner into an influencer. Together with his business partner, they come up with the video ideas and feed their protagonist certain German youth slang to use, but all of Werner’s reactions are completely authentic.

On his accounts, you can see Opa Werner being up to all kinds of shenanigans, from dancing in a full-body leather outfit and sunglasses (“When you’re almost 90 and realise… that raving has no age limit”) to attending an electronic dance music festival and drinking beer from a funnel contraption that is popular with German festivalgoers to drink a lot in little time, which – you guessed it – went down much better with our up-for-anything grandpa than the matcha latte.

For Werner, the social media success has developed into more than a nice little side earner that supplements his pension. Last November, he hit it big when Lidl hired him as a testimonial for the retailer’s own matcha latte powder and launched a campaign that saw the 88-year-old appear on a massive billboard outside Cologne’s Lanxess Arena.

All in all, Werner might just have found the right recipe for his life in retirement: spend time with young people because “old people’s favourite topic is illnesses. I can’t bear it anymore,” as he told the media. And on that note, wishing you a happy 2026, with a good dose of Opa Werner energy!

Barbara Geier is a London-based freelance writer, translator and communications consultant. She is also the face behind www.germanyiswunderbar.com, a German travel and tourism guide and blog that was set up together with UK travel writer Andrew Eames in 2010.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Discover Germany, Switzerland & Austria.

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