Alfred Bauer Prize

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The Alfred Bauer Prize is the additional designation for the Silver Bear . The film prize has been awarded at the Berlinale since 1987 . It was named after the first director of the festival, Alfred Bauer .

history

After Bauer's death in 1986, the film festival donated the Alfred Bauer Prize, which has been awarded since 1987 during the Berlinale for a debut film and later for a feature film in the competition program, which opens up new perspectives in film art.

At the end of January 2020, shortly before the start of the new festival, the Berlinale tour decided to suspend the award of the award named after Alfred Bauer. The problematic role of Bauer in National Socialism was previously unknown to the current Berlinale management. Katja Nicodemus wrote in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , following on from research by the amateur film scholar Ulrich Hähnel, a. a. with materials from the Berlin State Archives it was proven that Bauer played a much more active role in the Nazi propaganda bureaucracy than the official announcements of the Berlinale would suggest. The latter relied primarily on Bauer's self-portrayals. However, he had misrepresented the time of his membership in the NSDAP and SA, and he had concealed memberships in other NS organizations and his work as a consultant in the 20-member Reichsfilmintendanz .

The film historian Armin Jäger said in an interview with the newspaper Die Welt that the essential facts were known to him earlier. He described Bauer as an opportunistic bureaucrat, but he was not a decisive figure and certainly not the master of life and death. "In my impression he was more of a coordinator and recorder of production processes, but not someone who made independent decisions." Jäger also considered the renaming of the award named after Bauer to be justified.

In the series View into the Archives of the Deutsche Kinemathek , the presentation of a publication by Rolf Aurich on Alfred Bauer and his role at the Berlin Film Festival was planned for February 24, 2020, which should also deal with his Nazi past in a relatively detailed manner. Nicodemus, who was present the book manuscript had, in the time in advance criticized in turn selective evaluation of the sources and the unexamined assumption of self-portraits builder. As a result, the Kinemathek canceled the presentation and the publication of the booklet was postponed indefinitely in order to initially be able to refer to the sources again "for an in-depth assessment".

In February 2020, the Berlinale leadership commissioned the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich to research Alfred Bauer's position in the Nazi power apparatus. The results of the investigation are expected in summer 2020.

In 2021, the Alfred Bauer Prize is to be replaced by the Jury Prize .

Award winners

The director Nora Fingscheidt with the Silver Bear for the 2019 award-winning competition entry Systemsprenger

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Film Festival price suspended… In: zeit.de , January 29, 2020 (accessed January 30, 2020).
  2. ↑ a b Katja Nicodemus: “A zealous SA man” - Alfred Bauer was the first director of the Berlinale ... In: zeit.de, January 29, 2020, accessed on January 30, 2020, - issue 6/2020, p. 49 f.
  3. ↑ Katja Nicodemus in conversation with Doris Schäfer-Noske: Berlinale director Alfred Bauer “An eager SA man” . Deutschlandfunk website of January 29, 2020, accessed on February 5, 2020
  4. ↑ Hanns-Georg Rodek With the founding of the Federal Republic, actually all Nazis come back . In: Die Welt from February 1, 2020
  5. ↑ Press release of the Kinemathek from January 29, 2020.
  6. ↑ Berlinale commissions reports on Alfred Bauer. Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 18, 2020, accessed on February 18, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Berlinale now awards gender-neutral actor prizes. In: The press . August 25, 2020, accessed August 25, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Janick Nolting: Berlinale takes place in 2021 and changes the award ceremony. In: digitalfernsehen.de. August 24, 2020, accessed August 25, 2020 .