Franz Schnyder

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Franz Schnyder (born March 5, 1910 in Burgdorf ; † February 8, 1993 in Münsingen ) was a Swiss film director .

Career

The son of the engineer Max Schnyder and twin brother of the Swiss diplomat Felix Schnyder went through acting training in Germany after graduating from high school , first with Gustav Lindemann and Louise Dumont in Düsseldorf, then with Ilka Grüning and Lucie Höflich in Berlin. He received his first engagement in Mainz in 1932 , after 1933 he worked as an actor and director at theaters in Breslau , Münster and St. Gallen . Since the 1937/38 season Schnyder worked at the Deutsches Theater Berlin under Heinz Hilpert and in 1938 at the Münchner Kammerspiele .

At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 Schnyder returned to Switzerland, did military service and in the same year received a directing contract at the Schauspielhaus Zurich . In addition, he also staged works at the Stadttheater Bern and at the Theater Basel , whose drama director he became in 1944. Schnyder preferred political plays such as Georg Kaiser's Der Soldat Tanaka and Franz Werfels Jacobowsky and the Colonel .

In 1941 he made his film debut with the patriotic production Gilberte de Courgenay . Since his next feature film, Wilder Urlaub, was a failure, Schnyder only received directorships again years later. In the 1950s, he made a name for himself primarily by filming works by Jeremias Gotthelf . Uli der Knecht (1954) and the sequel Uli der Pächter (1955), both with Hannes Schmidhauser and Liselotte Pulver in the leading roles, were great successes. Schnyder's film style was often criticized by critics as too conservative and conservative. The 6 Kummer-Buben (1968) based on the youth book of the same name by Elisabeth Müller was his last feature film.

He then worked for years on his film project about the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi . In 1978 he was able to complete the script, but found no funding for the production. He increasingly lost touch with reality and spent the last years of his life in the Münsingen psychiatric center . In 1984 the Swiss director Christoph Kühn shot another film about Franz Schnyder. On the occasion of his 100th birthday, Swiss television digitally restored his work.

Part of Franz Schnyder's estate is in the Bern Burger Library .

Filmography (selection)

Documentary film

  • Christoph Kühn: FRS - The Nation's Cinema , 94 min., Zurich 1985

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Franz Schnyder in the catalog of the Burgerbibliothek Bern
  2. ↑ The Don Quixote from Burgdorf , Tages-Anzeiger, May 26, 2020
  3. ↑ Interview with authors SRF
personal data
SURNAME Schnyder, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss film director
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Burgdorf BE
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1993
Place of death Münsingen BE