Günter Rohrbach

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Günter Rohrbach at the presentation of the Cultural Honorary Prize of the City of Munich in 2015 to Werner Herzog in the ballroom of the Old Town Hall

Günter Rohrbach (born October 23, 1928 in Neunkirchen (Saar) ) is a German film and television producer .

Life

Star by Günter Rohrbach on the Boulevard der Stars in Berlin

Günter Rohrbach, son of a businessman, graduated from high school in Neunkirchen in 1949 and studied German , philosophy , psychology and theater studies in Bonn , Munich and Paris , where he mainly attended the student film club. He was assistant director at the Stadttheater Saarbrücken; he founded a private theater group with friends and staged plays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Günther Weisenborn . When he went to the University of Bonn for the second time in 1953, he got involved with Wilfried Berghahn, co-founder of the magazine Filmkritik, and Jürgen Habermas at the film club. When Berghahn got a permanent position at Südwestfunk , Rohrbach took over its weekly radio columns on a film that had just started. There were also numerous reviews in the film critics .

In 1957, Rohrbach was awarded a PhD with a thesis on Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus at the University of Bonn. phil. PhD. He then volunteered in the Bonner General-Anzeiger , for which he worked as a court reporter after his internship. In 1960 Rohrbach made the documentary The War Takes Place in the Cinema for Südwestfunk , which targeted German war films. At first it was still a theoretical preoccupation with the topic and at that time he could not imagine being a film producer.

In 1961 he applied to the program director of the WDR Hans-Joachim Lange for a position and became his assistant. At that time there was only one television program in the Federal Republic; WDR was the largest broadcaster in the ARD network; In June 1961, the State Treaty on the establishment of the Second German Television ( ZDF ) was signed, while the ARD stations developed concepts for the establishment of the third programs.

In 1963, the artistic director Klaus von Bismarck Rohrbach transferred the management of a planning staff for the newly created third television program of the WDR. He hired Peter Märthesheimer , Reinold E. Thiel, Peter Laudan and Herbert Janssen as employees and developed concrete plans with them. In 1965, shortly before the third program began broadcasting, Lange offered him to take over the management of the main television department in the first program. The productions in this area were still very theater-fixated in the early 1960s. Many supplies came from Bavaria . Rohrbach's concept envisaged a liberation from studios and backdrops, it was about a representation of reality. In the paradigmatic text Bildungsstheater or Zeittheater he fundamentally reconsidered the aesthetic, technical and media connections of fiction on television.

He brought Volker Canaris , Peter Märthesheimer and Joachim von Mengershausen into the editorial office, Gunther Witte was already there, Wolf-Dietrich Brücker came a little later. Rohrbach worked closely with several protagonists of the New German Cinema such as Hellmuth Costard , Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Hans W. Geißendörfer , Reinhard Hauff , Klaus Lemke , Edgar Reitz , Helma Sanders-Brahms , Volker Schlöndorff , Rudolf Thome , Margarethe von Trotta and Wim Wenders . A close collaboration developed with directors such as Peter Beauvais , Tom Toelle , Peter Zadek and above all Wolfgang Petersen .

The most important authors were Wolfgang Menge , Tankred Dorst and Leo Lehmann . Rohrbach's productions were in part highly controversial, for example Fassbinder's Eight Hours Are Not a Day or the homosexual dramas, which were still perceived as scandalous at the time, It is not the homosexual that is perverse, but the situation in which he lives by Rosa von Praunheim and Die Konsequenz by Wolfgang Petersen. The films Das Millionenspiel und Smog, written by Wolfgang Quantity, were also spectacular . Against the vote of all other TV game bosses of the ARD, he pushed through the purchase of the US series Holocaust - The Story of the White Family in 1978 . Gunther Witte developed the idea for the Tatort television series on Rohrbach's behalf .

From 1972 Rohrbach was also responsible for the entertainment, later also for the afternoon program. For example, he was responsible for such successful series in television history as Klimbim , Amlauf Band , the first German talk show The Later the Evening , the first German sitcom Ein Herz und ein Seele or Record Kitchen and the Otto shows.

Rohrbach was managing director of Bavaria Film in Munich from 1979 to 1994 . The new job began with a great challenge: to produce Das Boot , the most expensive German film to date. Wolfgang Petersen, connected to Rohrbach from his WDR time, was the director of his choice, who also wrote the script. Lothar-Günther Buchheim , the author of the book , behaved unpredictably. The professionalism of the team (camera: Jost Vacano , equipment: Rolf Zehetbauer , special effects: Theo Nischwitz ) and the perseverance of the actors (including Jürgen Prochnow , Herbert Grönemeyer , Uwe Ochsenknecht , Klaus Wennemann , Heinz Hoenig , Otto Sander ) led the company to Success. The result was a theatrical version (143 minutes), premiered on September 17, 1981 in Munich, and an initially three-part television version (308 min.), Which was first broadcast in 1985. In 1997 a director's cut was made (208 min.). The production costs were given as 30 million DM. Das Boot is the only German film to have received six Oscar nominations.

Other major projects, such as The Neverending Story , Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz and Klaus Emmerich's Rote Erde , also took place during Rohrbach's first years in Munich. This was followed by Schimanski crime scenes, the Loriot films, several Dominik Graf films, the first Helmut Dietl film, a total of around thirty films. The first film after the fall of the wall was called Go Trabi Go . In 1994 Rohrbach left Bavaria and became a freelance producer.

Rohrbach never saw himself as a potential screenwriter or director, but as an facilitator of projects that were close to his heart. He also pursues this goal as a freelance film producer. This includes the search for the material, the development of the script, the selection of the director, the casting, the composition of the team, the financing, dealing with the funding bodies, liaising with rental companies and television companies, observing the filming, the editing, the sound mix, the journalistic campaign, the premiere. There were great successes, including Die Apothekerin , Aimée and Jaguar , The White Massai and Anonyma - A Woman in Berlin , but also disappointments about the response; this was the case with Hotel Lux , for example .

Günter Rohrbach was one of the founding members of the German Film Academy in 2003 and, together with Senta Berger, the first President of the German Film Academy until 2010 . He taught at the University of Television and Film in Munich , where he was made an honorary professor. In 2011, his hometown Neunkirchen initiated the Günter Rohrbach Film Prize with him . In 2017 he was awarded the Cultural Prize of Honor by the City of Munich .

Günter Rohrbach lives in Munich-Bogenhausen .

Filmography (selection)

As head of the WDR television game:

As managing director of Bavaria Film:

As a freelance producer:

Awards

Film portraits about Günter Rohrbach

literature

Hans Helmut Prinzler (ed.): In good company. Günter Rohrbach. Texts about film and television. Bertz + Fischer publishing house, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-86505-186-8 .

Web links

Commons : Günter Rohrbach  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A selection is reprinted in: Hans Helmut Prinzler (Ed.): In good company. Günter Rohrbach. Texts about film and television. Bertz + Fischer publishing house, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-86505-186-8 .
  2. ↑ Radio interview HR2 Doppelkopf from January 6, 2012
  3. ^ First in: Hansjörg Schmitthenner (ed.): Eight television games . Munich: Piper 1966
  4. ↑ See also: Wolfgang Petersen / Ulrich Greiwe: I love the great stories. From the "crime scene" to Hollywood . Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch 1997.
  5. ↑ I've never had anything to do with crime novels! Report on crime scene inventor Gunther Witte from Spiegel online , accessed on August 23, 2014.
  6. ↑ Series of publications by the Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt am Main, Kinematograph No. 21. Henschel, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-89487-550-3
  7. ↑ Iris Berben and Bruno Completely new presidential couple of the German Film Academy. Film portal , February 15, 2010, accessed on January 12, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Awards of the Berlinale 2009 , accessed on April 29, 2017.
  9. ↑ Jury statement
personal data
SURNAME Rohrbach, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film and television producer
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Neunkirchen (Saar)