Digne Meller Marcovicz

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Digne Meller Marcovicz (born Digne Bontjes van Beek , born October 17, 1934 in Berlin ; † May 21, 2014 there ) was a German photo reporter, filmmaker, journalist and book author. She is considered one of the most important photo portraits of German cultural greats from the 1960s to 1980s.

Life

Digne Meller Marcovicz's parents were the ceramist Jan Bontjes van Beek and his second wife, the interior designer Rahel-Maria Bontjes van Beek, née Weisbach. Her parents married in 1933.

She grew up in her hometown and attended school there. She spent part of her childhood with her older sisters Cato and Mietje .

The family's economic circumstances were difficult, as the “ Nuremberg Laws ” in 1935 resulted in the mother being banned from working. Her father and sister Cato Bontjes van Beek were arrested in Berlin in 1942 because of their connection to a group of the Red Orchestra. While her father was released after three months in prison, Cato Bontjes van Beek was executed in Plötzensee .

Meller Marcovicz studied photography in Munich. She worked as a freelance photo reporter and journalist for German press organs and publishers since 1961. From 1964 to 1985 she was a "permanent freelance" photo journalist for the news magazine Der Spiegel .

Through her work as a photo journalist, Meller Marcovicz got to know numerous prominent personalities. She had a special friendship with the photographer Herbert Tobias and the filmmaker Werner Schroeter , for whom she a. a. worked as a still photographer at Palermo or Wolfsburg as well as in other of his film productions. Marcovicz was also known to the writer and director Einar Schleef , in whose diary from 1977 to 1980 numerous encounters between the two are described in detail.

Meller Marcovicz lived and worked in Italy from 1987 to 2002 . In between she stayed in Berlin again and again, where she briefly taught at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin in 1995 - she offered prospective filmmakers a course on still photography.

In 2002 she moved back to Berlin. She was married twice - her first marriage to the advertising specialist and art collector Pali Meller Marcovicz, and her second marriage to the surgeon Istvàn Klempa - and had three children. The daughter Gioia Meller Marcovicz is a furniture designer in Italy.

In 2008 Marcovicz was awarded the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize for books for children and young people for the book Massel - Last witnesses . The award ceremony took place on September 1st in Essen.

Since June 30th, 2009 Marcovicz has been the godmother of the Paul Löbe School in Berlin in the project School without Racism - School with Courage .

The film historian Wolfgang Jacobsen and her looked for around a hundred black and white photographs from 50 years from her photo archive, which came out in 2012 in the photo volume The Eternal Moment . Above all, film artists and writers such as Volker Schlöndorff, Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Kinski, Margarethe von Trotta, Thomas Bernhard and Uwe Johnson are portrayed in it. This retrospective shows the photographer as someone who did not allow any poses or self-portrayals, but strived for authentic, unpretentious “pictorial truth”.

Meller Marcovicz died in May 2014 at the age of 79 in Berlin-Pankow ; her grave is in the forest cemetery Zehlendorf in Berlin-Nikolassee .

Filmography

  • God knows where God lives , documentary film, Germany 2003, director, script, camera: Digne Meller Marcovicz, producer: Bontjes van Beek Prod.
  • Stalinallee (SPIEGEL TV), 1993
  • RIGOCCIOLI - Una strada per il ritorno , Bontjes van Beek Prod., Italia, 1992
  • Wilhelm Reich - VIVA - Little MAN , Bontjes van Beek Prod., 1987
  • Nature in the schoolyard , produced and broadcast by WDR, 1985
  • Ferdi versus Frankfurt , produced and broadcast by HR, 1983
  • Practically imaginable , documentary, Germany 1982, director, script, camera: Digne Meller Marcovicz, premiere: March 18, 1982 ZDF

and from 1994 to 2004 numerous films for dctp , which were made in collaboration with Alexander Kluge .

Books (selection)

  • The eternal moment - film artist and writer in the picture . Edited by Wolfgang Jacobsen. edition text + kritik, Munich 2012. 110 pp.
  • “Pots, people, life.” Reports on the life of Jan Bontjes van Beek. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2011
  • Pig. Last witnesses . 2007
  • To the people… Talking about Blinky Palermo . 2003
  • The living and the dead . 1992
  • Wilhelm Reich . VIVA LITTLE MAN. The book about the film . 1987
  • Martin Heidegger . Photos 23 September 1966/17 + 18 June 1968 . Fey Verlag, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-88361-102-6 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice in Tagesspiegel from June 8, 2014
  2. ^ The photographer Digne M. Marcovicz. From Quick to Heidegger . In: taz , May 12, 2012
  3. ^ Review by Claudia Lenssen in Deutschlandradio Kultur on May 14, 2012: “Timeless charm and friendly distance” Digne Meller-Marcovicz: The eternal moment
personal data
SURNAME Meller Marcovicz, Digne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bontjes van Beek, Digne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photo journalist, documentary filmmaker and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 2014
Place of death Berlin