Gertrud David

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Gertrud David (born December 25, 1872 in Leipzig , † June 21, 1936 in Berlin ) was a women's rights activist , journalist , consumer cooperative and filmmaker.

Life

Gertrud Swiderski was born on December 25, 1872, the oldest of four siblings in Leipzig. Her parents were the mechanical engineering manufacturer Philipp Swiderski and his wife Helene, geb. Schlenk.

In April 1896 she married the Social Democrat Eduard David , a leading representative of the right-wing revisionist wing of the SPD. Gertrud David was involved in the Berlin association for social cooperatives founded in 1896 . In 1899 she published two articles in the Socialist Monthly Bulletin and in 1910 one article on questions of the consumer cooperative movement. In 1899 she and her husband played a key role in founding the Mainz savings, consumer and production cooperative. The couple lived separately from 1908 and divorced in 1911. Even after the divorce, Gertrud David worked closely with Eduard David politically and in journalism. She acted as the editor of the “Socialist Monthly Issues” and a social democratic press service and, in addition to promoting the cooperative system, was strongly committed to the women's issue. The undogmatic social democrat worked closely with the bourgeois women's movement.

Gertrud David came to film at the end of the First World War through her commitment to maternity protection. In 1917 she wrote the screenplay for a film entitled "The Outlaws" which thematized the fate of illegitimate children as victims of society. In 1919 a second film on child protection followed, "Our Children - Our Future", followed by several films that dealt with the current political situation in the young Weimar Republic. From 1924 Gertrud David ran the film production company Gervid Film GmbH in Berlin. The name of this company consists of the first syllable of their first name and the second of their surname. As a producer, director and screenwriter, she filmed social dramas and produced documentaries and commercials. She was one of the most important protagonists of the welfare film genre, with which the churches in particular, but also non-denominational organizations such as Arbeiterwohlfahrt and the German Red Cross used to advertise their social work in the interwar period.

As early as 1922 David had taken on her first film assignment for the Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten , Bethel - a series of five short films that were intended to promote the work of the facility. In 1934 the Betheler Filmstelle commissioned her with a second series of three further portraits. In the following eleven years, David shot and produced no fewer than 41 films in quick succession - for the German Red Cross and the Central Welfare Office of German Jews as well as for the SPD, various trade unions and the large-scale purchasing society of German consumer associations .

In 1926, “From the armory of the SPD”, a portrait of social democratic press work, was created. Her most important clients were the Protestant film locations, for which she produced around a third of all professional films made at that time. Her best-known films include “Talking Hands” about deaf-blind residents of a diaconal facility near Potsdam (1925), “Places and works of love in the beautiful Lipperlande” (1927/28) and “In the footsteps of Father Bodelschwingh”, which was published in March 1931 100th birthday of Friedrich v. Bodelschwinghs d. Ä. celebrated its premiere.

In 1933 David made a second feature film for the Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten in Bethel. Under the title “Wrestling People. The tragedy of a family “he took up the sensitive topic of hereditary diseases. Although the film took a positive stance on eugenics, the new rulers refused to give it the ratings "popular education" and "educational film" and in 1937 banned it altogether. Gertrud David no longer lived to see this ban. She died in 1936 at the age of 63.

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literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Prinz: Bread and Dividends. Consumers' associations in Germany and England before 1914. Page 259, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1998, 404 pages, ISBN 3525357753
  2. ↑ See Gesa Kok: Bethel film wanted. In: In Focus, Issue 1 2007, LWL media center for Westphalia. [1] (PDF; 1.8 MB) and the press release [2], accessed April 1, 2009
personal data
SURNAME David, Gertrud
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Swiderski, Gertrud
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German women's rights activist, journalist, consumer cooperative and filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1936
Place of death Berlin