Friedrich Dalsheim

Friedrich Karl Dalsheim (born October 25, 1895 in Frankfurt am Main ; † August 19, 1936 in Zurich , Switzerland ) was a German lawyer , ethnologist , naturalist , expedition leader and documentary filmmaker .

Life

The son of the Jew Leo Dalsheim and his wife Berta Stein received a legal education (degree: doctorate ) and then worked as a lawyer .

After six weeks of camera training with Emil Schünemann and Alexander von Lagorio , Dalsheim traveled with the ethnologist Gulla Pfeffer on an expedition to Togo , where both made the film Menschen im Busch in the second half of 1929 . During the five-month filming period, he exposed a total of 11,000 meters of film to record the customs and life of the Ewe . The film, which he himself produced, attracted some attention when it premiered in 1930. In 1932 Dalsheim traveled to Bali to direct a nature and documentary film with a play story in the tradition of Robert J. Flaherty . The film produced by him and Victor von Plessen was released in German cinemas on February 16, 1933 under the title The Island of Demons . At this point in time, Adolf Hitler had just established himself as Reich Chancellor in Berlin .

Since then the Jew Dalsheim has not been able to work for German production companies. Thereupon, in the summer of 1933, in Greenland, in collaboration with the polar researcher and ethnologist Knud Rasmussen , he staged a semi-documentary Danish film, Palo's Bride Trip , with Walter Traut , an employee of Leni Riefenstahl and Arnold Fanck , behind the camera. This combination of ethno documentation and feature film also met with great interest. For the first time the language of the Eskimos was presented to the cinema audience.

In his last film, which brought him together again with Baron Plessen, Dalsheim was no longer mentioned in the staff list. The Indonesia film Die Kopfjäger von Borneo , which premiered in 1936 as a German-Dutch joint production in Berlin, was directed by Plessen and only had Friedrich Dalsheim as an (unnamed) “employee”. At this point in time, Dalsheim had long been in exile in Switzerland. On 19 August the same year he committed at a Zurich hotel suicide .

Filmography (complete)

• 1930: People in the Bush (director)
• 1933: Isle of Demons (director, screenplay, camera, co-production)
• 1934: Palos Brautfahrt (Palos brudefærd) (director)
• 1936: The headhunters of Borneo (collaboration)

literature

• Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview . ACABUS, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 3-86282-049-1 , p. 131 f.
• Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .

Web links

• Friedrich Dalsheim in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Friedrich Dalsheim at filmportal.de