Ernst Seeger

Ernst Seeger (born December 20, 1884 in Mannheim , † August 17, 1937 in Berlin ) was a high-ranking film official in the Weimar Republic and in the National Socialist German Reich .

Life

After visiting the Royal Wilhelm Gymnasium in Berlin Ernst began Seeger, himself the son of a lawyer, a Berlin law studies, which he in 1912 in Heidelberg with the promotion graduated. After a brief activity as an assessor at the Berlin II district court , he was first entrusted with film censorship matters in 1915 after moving to the office of the attorney general . In October 1916, he was transferred to the military office of the Foreign Office and from there to the administration of the Image and Film Office (BUFA) .

From May 1919 to March 1923 Ernst Seeger was head of the Reichsfilmstelle in the Reich Ministry of the Interior . From 1921 he worked at the same time in the highest film censorship authority of the Weimar Republic , the film inspectorate , in which he soon became deputy director and on March 1, 1924 director. In this position he worked on the temporary ban on showing the films Battleship Potemkin and In the West Nothing New . In 1929 Seeger was appointed Ministerialrat .

On March 13, 1933, Ernst Seeger took over the management of the film department of the newly created Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and, in April, also the quota unit that regulated the import of foreign films. On June 29, 1937, Joseph Goebbels appointed him chairman of the film section of the “Commission for the Preservation of Contemporary Documents”, whose task it was to collect materials connected with the Nazi state.

As a lawyer, Ernst Seeger was also involved in the formulation and commentary on both the Film Act of May 12, 1920 and the Act of Film of February 16, 1934. The latter formed the legal basis for the most drastic film policy measures of the National Socialist state. In the following years, Seeger brought out the amendments, implementation and contingent provisions of the Film Act, "taking into account the jurisdiction of the Oberfilmprüfstelle".

After the end of the Second World War , Seeger's writings The War of the Invisible Fronts (self-published, Tübingen 1933), The Laws and Ordinances for the German Film Industry (Film-Kurier, Berlin 1933-34), Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the 20th Century and His Christian Opponents (Teutoburg-Verlag, Marbach 1935), The German Action. (Tasks and objectives) (Klein, Leipzig 1936), Evangelical Dogmatics and Judaism (Teutoburg-Verlag, Marbach 1936) placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone . In the German Democratic RepublicThis list was followed by his The German History Picture Book for Young and Old German Believers (Teutoburg-Verlag, Marbach 1935).

Ernst Seeger died in Berlin in 1937 at the age of 52 and was buried in the Old St. Matthew Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg . The grave has not been preserved.

Censorship report (selection)

• 1924: Crazy Existences Result: Ban

See also

• National Socialist Film Policy

literature

• Hans-Michael Bock : Ernst Seeger - lawyer, censor. In: CineGraph . Lexicon for German-language films. edition text & kritik, Munich 1977ff, fascicle 20.
• Our authorities. Dr. jur. Ernst Seeger. In: Lichtbild-Bühne. January 7, 1933
• Ministerialrat Dr. Seeger †. In: Film-Kurier. August 18, 1937

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Seeger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Georg Eckes: Ernst Seeger. (English short biography)

Individual evidence

1. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet zone of occupation: List of the literature to be sorted out. Zentralverlag, Berlin 1946 ( digitized version )
2. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet zone of occupation: List of the literature to be sorted out. Second addendum. Deutscher Zentralverlag, Berlin 1948 ( digitized version )
3. ^ Ministry of National Education of the German Democratic Republic: List of literature to be sorted out. Third addendum. VEB Deutscher Zentralverlag, Berlin 1953 ( digitized version )
4. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2006. p. 309.