Erwin Leiser

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Erwin Leiser (born May 16, 1923 in Berlin ; † August 22, 1996 in Zurich ) was a German-Swedish publicist and director of historical-political documentaries . The main topic of his films was the reappraisal of the National Socialist dictatorship in an enlightening and warning sense.

Live and act

The Leiser family emigrated with 15-year-old Erwin in 1938 - due to their Jewish origins, which threatened their existence in Germany - after the November pogroms of the Nazi dictatorship against German Jews into exile in Sweden .

Erwin Leiser then lived in Lund , Sweden , where he studied and published his first work. After the Second World War he stayed in Sweden and from 1950 to 1958 was the feature editor of the newspaper Morgon-Tidningen in Stockholm .

In addition to his journalistic activities, he translated German-language literature into Swedish . He was one of the first sponsors and translators of Nelly Sachs, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and translated Bertolt Brecht , Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch . This work led him to publish an international theater yearbook.

After 1958 he worked as a freelance journalist for newspapers, radio and television. As a director and author he made numerous documentaries and reports. His first film was " Mein Kampf " from 1960, a documentary about what the Nazis called " Third Reich " . The film is still considered a classic among documentaries about the time of National Socialism . Later, too, the confrontation with fascism , especially with its German variant, National Socialism and the coming to terms with its crimes, remained the defining theme of his filmic and journalistic work.

In 1961 Leiser left Sweden and moved to Zurich, where he lived until the end of his life. He continued to make documentaries and created numerous portraits of international artists for television.

In 1993 the documentary " Pimpf war everyone " was broadcast on German television - in this film Erwin Leiser reports on the experiences of his difficult school days during the Nazi dictatorship in the 1930s at the Berlin Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster . He reports discrimination against himself and other Jewish students, while some of his classmates deny that Jews were ever discriminated against and / or beaten at school. On the occasion of the 50-year high school graduation ceremony in 1990, Leiser met again with some of his classmates at the time (a third of them had died in World War II). Erwin Leiser compiled the above-mentioned documentation from the stories of the individual fellow high school graduates - including the later Nobel Prize winner in physics Hans Dehmelt .

He found his final resting place in the Oberer Friesenberg cemetery .

review

On the occasion of his death, the feature section of Die Zeit Leiser called it a "clearer and admonisher":

“ The principle of all these films was not to proclaim judgments, but to actively invite the audience to judge. Quieter it was never about the beauty of the pictures, but about the attitude that is expressed in them, the clarity with which the inhumane dimension of any ideology becomes clear in his films - "without the quiet babbling of a comment that explains everything , and without the index finger of the contrast montage that bores into the senses of the viewer. "

Filmography

  • 1960: my fight
  • 1961: Eichmann and the 3rd Reich
  • 1963: choose life
  • 1968: Germany, wake up!
  • 1968: For example Fritz Lang
  • 1968: Rhythm 21/68 - Hans Richter films and paints
  • 1972: No world for children
  • 1973: I live in the present - experiment on Hans Richter
  • 1982: life after survival
  • 1985: The Followers
  • 1985: Hiroshima - Remembering or Forgetting?
  • 1986: Boteros Corrida
  • 1987: The world in a container
  • 1987: Hitler's special order for Linz
  • 1988: The Trial by Fire - November Pogrom 1938
  • 1992: 1937 - Art and Power
  • 1993: The UFA - Myth and Reality
  • 1993: Everyone was Pimpf
  • 1995: We were ten brothers - the way to Auschwitz
  • 1995: Otto John : a German story
  • 1995: enemy images

Books

  • "My fight". An image documentation based on Erwin Leiser's film. Fischer Library, Frankfurt am Main 1962; Beltz, Weinheim 1995, ISBN 3-89547-711-7 .
  • Choose life! The book about the film. Hans Deutsch, Vienna 1963.
  • “Germany, awake!” Propaganda in Third Reich film. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1968; 3rd ext. 1989 edition, ISBN 3-499-12598-6 .
  • Life after survival. Escaping the Holocaust - Encounters and Fates. Athenäum Verlag , Königstein 1982; 2nd rev. Edition Weinheim 1995, ISBN 3-89547-701-X .
  • Voyages of discovery and hikes at home. Weber, Lorch 1982, ISBN 3-921519-51-9 .
  • Close ups. Encounters with artists of our time. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1990, ISBN 3-499-12673-7 .
  • God has no change. Memories. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1993 ISBN 3-462-02248-2 .
  • Art is life. Encounters. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-462-02477-9 .
  • In search of reality. My films 1960–1996. UVK Verlagsgesellschaft , Konstanz 1996, ISBN 3-89669-208-9 .

literature

  • Tobias Ebbrecht: Documentary as a court case. Erwin Leiser's "Eichmann and the Third Reich" (1961). In: Filmblatt, Vol. 18, No. 51, 2013, pp. 47–58
  • Chronicler, collector, narrator. Erwin Leiser and his films about Hans Richter and Roman Vishniac . In: Filmblatt, Volume 19, No. 54, 2014, pp. 44–53
  • Transitions: Passages through a German-Israeli film history. Neofelis, Berlin 2014 ISBN 3943414515 (With a chapter on EL's Eichmann film)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Erwin Leiser "Die Zeit", August 30, 1996, issue 36
personal data
SURNAME Quieter, Erwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swedish publicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 22, 1996
Place of death Zurich