Carl Junghans

Carl Friedrich Walter Junghans (born October 7, 1897 in Dresden , † November 8, 1984 in Munich ) was a German film director , film editor and screenwriter , especially of documentaries .

Life

The son of the tailor Ferdinand Junghans and his wife Emilie attended the humanistic grammar school and in 1916 volunteered as a war volunteer. However, he suffered a back injury during his training in the Body Grenadier Regiment No. 100 and was dismissed as unfit for duty in 1917. From 1918 he took music lessons and trained as an actor. In 1921 he stood as a youthful hero on the stage of the Stadttheater von Freiberg and worked as a dramaturge at the Albert Theater in Dresden and at the New Theater am Zoo in Berlin. Until 1923 he tried his hand at acting and took on extras in film, including as Christ in the Catholic trend film Sturzende Götter . From 1924 to 1925 he worked as a journalist. He earned his living particularly by reciting revolutionary poems and writing film reviews for Berlin newspapers, with particular interest in Charlie Chaplin . From 1924 to 1927 and then again from 1929 to 1930 he was a member of the KPD .

Movies

At that time, Junghans took part in several documentaries for the Prometheus Film company founded by Willi Münzenberg . These compilation films , in which he drew on existing Soviet material, glorified Lenin, communism, and the Soviet Union. At that time he was earning his living primarily by producing German versions of foreign, especially Czech, films. The financial independence he acquired and his contacts to the Czech film world enabled him to direct his first feature film So ist das Leben in Prague in 1929 . The focus of the film is an impoverished laundress, her life and tragic death. After another film he was hired to Moscow, where he stayed from 1931 to 1932 without being able to realize a film project. From 1933 to 1935 he worked in Prague on the Czech-Yugoslav film And Life Goes On . In 1935 he returned to Germany. Despite his past, he was able to act as a screenwriter here and taught film theory at the Reimann School . His montage of the film about the 1936 Winter Games, commissioned by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , also received international recognition.

His next major commission, Die Scourge der Welt, about the Spanish Civil War , which Junghans assembled from photographs taken by German cameramen, was banned as being too communist-friendly and only appeared after revisions by other authors in 1939 under the title Heroes in Spain . Even his work on a monumental film about the Nazi Party Congress in 1936 was not to the satisfaction of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels . That film, Years of Decision , wasn't finished until 1939 and never performed. From July 1938 Junghans worked on his second feature film Old Heart Goes on a Journey, based on a novel by Hans Fallada . He did not stick to the script version revised by the Propaganda Ministry, which is why this film was banned. In April 1939 Junghans emigrated to France. During the French campaign in June 1940 he moved from Paris to Casablanca and from there to the USA. He initially worked here as a gardener and gradually gained a new reputation as a portrait and landscape photographer. He also made two short, self-funded films about Monument Valley . In 1963 he returned to Germany and settled in Munich. In 1967 he set his silent film So ist das Leben to music , which was shown at the world exhibitions in Ottawa and Mexico and finally also on German television.

Junghans, who now identified himself as a supporter of Richard Nixon and Franz Josef Strauss , undertook extensive trips through Africa, especially to Morocco, in the 1970s, and in 1974 saw the German premiere of Altes Herz geht auf die Reise in Düsseldorf. He was a guest of honor and occasionally honorary president of the jury at film festivals and received the gold ribbon in 1975 for his services to German film .

Filmography

• 1922: Falling Gods (Actor)
• 1925: The Cowboy in Wedding (director, screenplay, camera, editor)
• 1928: Lenin 1905–1928 / The Road to Victory (director, screenplay, editor)
• 1928: World change. Ten Years of the Republic - Ten Years of the Soviet Union (Director, Screenplay, Editor)
• 1928: What do the communists want? (Direction, screenplay, editing)
• 1928: Rote Pfingsten / Rote Pfingsten 1928 (director, screenplay, editor)
• 1929: That's life ( Takový je zivot ; director, screenplay, editor)
• 1930: Tonfilmconference (direction, editing)
• 1930: camera reporter races through New York / America, you're better off (director, screenplay, editor)
• 1931: Film montage 1912–1928 (direction, script, editing, production)
• 1932: Fleeing Shadows (direction, book)
• 1935: And life goes on ( A zivot jde dál ; director, screenplay)
• 1935: Noise in the Secret Annex (co-script)
• 1936: Through the desert (screenplay, based on the novel by Karl May)
• 1936: youth of the world. The film from the IV Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (script, editor)
• 1936: The Scourge of the World (Fight in Spain) (Director, Screenplay, Editor)
• 1938: The big time (direction, screenplay, editing with Gerhard Stegemann and Hans Weidemann)
• 1938: Old Heart goes on a journey (director, screenplay)
• 1939: years of decision (participation)
• 1939: Heroes in Spain (co-director, co-screenplay)
• 1947: Sand Paintings (short documentary film; direction, script, editing, production)
• 1947: Monuments of the Past (short documentary; direction, script, editing, production)
• 1947: Monuments of the Past / Memories of Monument Valley ( Monuments of the Past ; direction, book, commentary, production)
• 1971: Carinthia in four seasons / The four seasons (direction, script, editing, production)

Awards

• 1936: IFF Venice : Coppa dell'Istituto Nazionale Luce per il Miglior Documentario for the youth of the world
• 1937: International Exhibition in Paris: Grand Prix for Young People of the World
• 1957: Top Award (Gold Cup) of the Eleven Western States
• 1959: National Award for the Best Postcard (Dexter Press)
• 1961: Seattle: Award for Notable Achievement
• 1975: Filmband in gold for many years of excellent work in German film

literature

• Ralf Forster: How is a classic film created? On the reception story of SO IS LIFE (1930) by Carl Junghans . In: Filmblatt, Volume 17, No. 48, Spring 2012, ISSN  1433-2051 , pp. 3-11.
• In the same booklet: The Totally Perfect Marriage. An unrealized film manuscript by Carl Junghans from 1930 . Filmblatt, vol. 17, No. 48, spring 2012, ISSN  1433-2051 , pp. 12–15.
• Kay Less : 'In life, more is taken from you than given ...'. Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 634 f.

Web links

• Carl Junghans in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Photo with biography