Ewald von Demandowsky
Ewald von Demandowsky (born October 21, 1906 in Berlin ; † October 7, 1946 there ) was German Reichsfilmdramaturg and head of production at Tobis at the time of National Socialism .
Life
Demandowsky studied at a university, did a banking apprenticeship and worked as a writer. From 1924 to 1932 he took on supporting roles in theaters and then worked as a secretary at the Berlin Brunnen publishing house. Demandowsky was a member of the NSDAP as early as 1931/32 and again from 1937. From June 1933 he made a career as a cultural-political editor at the Völkischer Beobachter .
Demandowsky became Reichsfilmdramaturg in 1937 and head of production at the Tobis film company in 1939. Along with Fritz Hippler, he was one of the most important film officials in totalitarian Germany after 1933. Both quickly made careers under the Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and were considered his favorites and confidants. Repeatedly he took part in important meetings and film premieres. Demandowsky was among other things the producer of the anti-British Nazi propaganda film Ohm Krüger and the euthanasia propaganda film I accuse . He was an advocate of much closer control of the Ufa film production company, which, in his opinion, was not run according to the “Führer principle”.
Still married and father of two children, he started an affair with the then 19-year-old actress Hildegard Knef in 1944 , while his wife and children had left Berlin because of the dangers of the air war. Knef tried to cover up the affair after the war. Drafted into the Volkssturm in April 1945 , he was taken prisoner of war in Poland in May 1945 , from which he was released after a short time. He returned to Berlin.
In 1946 he was arrested by the US military police and handed over to the Soviet military administration . By a military tribunal , he was sentenced to death and on October 7, 1946 in Berlin-Lichtenberg shot . (Judgment under Article 58-2 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of the Military Tribunal of the Garrison of the Soviet Sector of Berlin). In the early 1990s, Demandowsky was "rehabilitated" by the Public Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation (Military Chief Prosecutor) under Article 3 (a) of the Russian Federation Law On Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Persecution of October 18, 1991.
Works
- His Majesty the Child's Head. A comedy in 3 acts freely based on Axel Delmar , 1935
- Fine people. A speculator comedy in 3 acts freely based on Axel Delmar , 1935
- Revolution in buses , stage play, 1936
- Busse & Sohn , stage play, 1941
literature
- Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
- Hildegard Knef: The gift horse. Report from a lifetime . Molden, Vienna 1970.
- Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , short biographies on the enclosed CD, p. 90f.
Movie
- Knef - the early years. Documentary, Germany, 2005, 59:14 min., Script and director: Felix Moeller, production: NEF, Tagore Films, WDR , rbb , Avro, first broadcast: November 25, 2005 on West 3 , synopsis from ARD , film data from filmportal. de , u. a. with Volker Schlöndorff , Thomas Harlan , Jürgen Trimborn , Alexander von Demandowsky and Knef's husbands Kurt Hirsch, David Cameron , Paul von Schell.
Web links
- Literature by and about Ewald von Demandowsky in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study , Göttingen 2015, short biographies on the enclosed CD, p. 90f.
- ^ A b Ernst Klee: The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 97.
- ^ "Remnants of Parliamentarism". Ewald from Demandowsky's Criticism of Ufa in the Völkischer Beobachter of March 10, 1937. ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: filmportal.de .
- ↑ Christian Schröder: The courage of the early years. In: Der Tagesspiegel . March 10, 2009, accessed January 7, 2013 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Demandowsky, Ewald von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German Reichsfilmdramaturg |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 21, 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 7, 1946 |
| Place of death | Berlin |