Gerhard Scheumann

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Front v. r. Left to right: Bruno Apitz , Walter Heynowski , Gerhard Scheumann and Michael Tschesno-Hell as guests at the 13th meeting of the GDR State Council on October 18, 1968.

Gerhard Scheumann (born December 25, 1930 in Ortelsburg , East Prussia , † May 30, 1998 in Berlin ) was one of the most famous documentary filmmakers in the GDR together with Walter Heynowski .

Life

From 1941 to 1945 Scheumann attended the National Political Education Institute in Stuhm in West Prussia . In 1945 he fled to Nordhausen , where he graduated from high school. In 1949 he joined the SED . After an internship at the daily newspaper “Thüringer Volk”, he worked between 1950 and 1953 as an editor for Berliner Rundfunk . From 1953 to 1955 he taught at the technical college for broadcasting in Weimar . From 1956 to 1962 he was head of the culture and science editorial team at Deutschlandsender . Since 1962 he worked at the DFF , where he a. a. 1963 developed the program “Prisma” (a domestic politics magazine about problems in the GDR) and moderated it until 1965.

From 1965 Scheumann worked with Walter Heynowski . Together with Heynowski, he founded the DEFA independent studio H & S in 1969 . In the 1960s and 1970s, there were three major themes that the film team dealt with: Vietnam , Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship and Kampuchea . After Scheumann gave a critical speech on the “media policy of the SED” before the IVth Congress of the Association of Film and Television Creators of the GDR , which took place from September 15 to 17, 1982 , the studio was closed. Heynowski and Scheumann went back to DEFA. At the same time, the two authors were also prohibited from using their “H&S” logo.

Scheumann and Heynowski continued to work under the umbrella of the DEFA studio from 1983 to 1991, whereby the film team, after initial problems, such as when emigrating to western countries, slowly returned to the old preferred position and from 1986 the films again with the logo of "Werkstatt H & S" could be drawn. They made fourteen films under this name. In 1991 the workshop was also closed in the course of the dissolution of DEFA.

In Comrade Krüger , they portrayed the former SS- Sturmbannführer Walter Krüger, who lived in the Federal Republic, and showed how attractive National Socialist ideas still are. She also dealt with this topic in the films The Lie and Death (1988), in which she - with the assistance of Stephan Hermlin - thematized the Nazi propaganda on the deportation of Jews in Germany, and Der Mann an der Rampe (1989). Here they found the man who organized the train traffic in Auschwitz and who now lived undisturbed in the Federal Republic.

From 1967 to 1988 Scheumann was a member of the board of directors of the Association of Film and Television Workers in the GDR, from 1969 to 1991 a member of the Academy of the Arts and from 1983 to 1990 a member of the GDR Writers' Association . In 1989 Scheumann received the title of professor. In 1980 and 1989 he received a national prize of the GDR 1st class for art and literature.

Gerhard Scheumann died of cancer in Berlin in May 1998 at the age of 67 .

criticism

At the time, Heynowski and Scheumann were praised for their analytical sharpness and their political commitment, but from today's perspective Heynowski and Scheumann are accused of " polemics , gross agitation and ideology," writes the DEFA Foundation. The working methods of H & S were also controversial: " When making their films, they repeatedly violate the minimum rules of documentary ethics, for example by veiling their identity or alcoholizing the interviewee ." This becomes evident, for example, in the film “The Laughing Man”, in which the interviewee “ Kongo-Müller ” increasingly suffers alcohol-related language difficulties and can hardly articulate himself clearly in the last third and in which the answers (based on jumps in the soundtrack and the image cut ) were reassembled.

Filmography

  • 1966: The laughing man
  • 1968: Pilots in Pajamas (4 parts)
  • 1969: The President in Exile (A polemic against Walter Becher )
  • 1970: The man without a past
  • 1971: Bye-Bye Wheelus
  • 1974: Yo he sido, yo soy, yo seré
  • 1974: Citizens of my country!
  • 1974: The War of the Mummies
  • 1974: I was, I am, I will be
  • 1975: The white coup
  • 1975: A minute of darkness doesn't blind us
  • 1976: Devil's Island
  • 1977: The iron fortress / Vietnam 4 - The iron fortress
  • 1978: Psalm 18
  • 1978: The dead are not silent
  • 1978: Passed the fire
  • 1979: Phoenix
  • 1980: Kampuchea - death and resurrection
  • 1981: The Angkar
  • 1986: The Generals (on Generals for Peace )
  • 1989: Comrade Krüger
  • 1989: The Third Skin

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://defa-stiftung.de/heynowski-walter
  2. ↑ see: rororo-Lexikon, directors and cameramen, 1999
personal data
SURNAME Scheumann, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German documentary filmmaker of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Ortelsburg
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1998
Place of death Berlin