German Film Academy Babelsberg
The German Film Academy Babelsberg was the first state-run German training center for film artists. The facility existed in Potsdam-Babelsberg from 1938 to 1944 and should not be confused with the Deutsche Filmakademie eV, founded in Berlin in 2003 . V.
history
The German Film Academy, established on the Babelsberg Ufa site, inaugurated on March 4, 1938 by the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , Joseph Goebbels , and gradually put into operation from November 1938, was intended to serve as a training facility for film directors, screenwriters, production managers, cameramen and film architects .
The academy, which was directly subordinate to the film department of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , was intended to replace the many film artists who had left the country after the National Socialist rise to power or had been banned from professions by the Reich Film Chamber .
The former Hessen-Nassau Gau propaganda director Wilhelm Müller-Scheld became president, and actor and director Wolfgang Liebeneiner became director of the artistic faculty . Among the lecturers were among the Reich film director Fritz Hippler , head of production Ufa , Ernst Hugo Correll , the art director Erich Kettelhut , the multi-talented Veit Harlan and Willi Forst , the composer Peter Kreuder , the dramaturge Dr. Hermann Gressieker , the graphic artist Josef Fenneker and well-known actors such as Heinrich George , Paul Hörbiger and Viktor de Kowa .
The training should last over four semesters and end with the production of a feature film. In addition to the arts faculty, there were two other faculties for film technology and film industry / film law. The subject “Weltanschauung” should also be taught. Applicants who wanted to enroll as students or guest audiences had to prove their "Aryan descent" and their membership in the NSDAP .
As a prestige project, the German Film Academy was initially given considerable funds and was thus able to purchase a select selection of foreign films as teaching material. As part of the urban redevelopment of Potsdam-Babelsberg into a “film city” promoted by the National Socialists, the German Film Academy was also to receive a monumental new building in the National Socialist representative style (architects Emil Fahrenkamp and Otto Kohtz ). Due to the war, however, the facility was soon too expensive, so that it was closed in the spring of 1940 by Joseph Goebbels "for the duration of the war". The planning of the construction project continued until 1943 and then stopped, in 1944 the German Film Academy was dissolved.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Peter C. Slansky: Film schools in Germany. History - typology - architecture . edition text + kritik, Munich, 2011. ISBN 978-3-86916-116-7