Photo stage
The Lichtbild-Bühne ( LBB ) is the title of the first German film illustrated .
The editor and publisher of this “specialist body for the field of interest in cinematographic theater practice” was Karl Wolffsohn . The first issue of the magazine appeared on April 19, 1908 in Berlin . It gained particular historical significance through a series of film reviews written by Paul Lenz-Levy the following year . These are the first film reviews in the history of German journalism.
The magazine has been published weekly since 1911. In 1923, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a “daily service” with current reports was added to supplement the weekly magazine, which was extended to every day between 1925 and 1927 with a four-page illustrated edition. In 1929 the two supplements "Stage Show - Varieté, Revue, Cabaret in the Cinema" and "Film and Sound - Cinema Orchestra, Sound Film and Film Illustration" appeared.
Thematically, the magazine's focus was on legal and economic advice to cinema operators; it contained rubrics such as the free "central information point", "cinematographic review" and "official regulations", patent review and information about censorship decisions. It usually comprised around 8 pages of editorial text and an equally extensive advertising section in which distributors and suppliers advertised. At times, however, the scope increased many times over. Since April 1910, the two-page supplement “Der Vorführer” has also appeared.
Since Karl Wolffsohn was Jewish, he was ousted from his publishing house by the National Socialist rulers in 1933 . In 1940 the magazine was merged with the Illustrierte Filmkurier .
Extensive, but mostly incomplete, collections of the Lichtbild-Bühne issues are available in various German film libraries .
Web links
- www.deutsches-filminstitut.de
- About cinema theater criticism, cinema theater criticism, aesthetic and sociological film criticism Historical outline of German-language film criticism from 1909 to 1969. By Helmut H. Diederichs