Hans Bittmann

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Hans Bittmann , also Hans Bittman , in Italy Giovanni Bittman (born August 10, 1905 in Tullnerbach , Austria-Hungary , † January 2, 1997 in Vienna ), was an Austrian sound engineer for German, Italian, Swiss and Spanish films.

Live and act

Hans Bittmann had completed an engineering degree with a doctorate and joined German film at the end of 1930. Here he was employed as a sound engineer for two years, and in this role he was responsible for a number of key mountain films by the three most famous representatives of this original German film genre: Arnold Fanck's The White Rush , Luis Trenker's Mountains in Flames and Leni Riefenstahl's mystical film The Blue Light . But Bittmann also provided the few sound effects in the largely silent horror film Vampyr - The Dream of Allan Gray by the Dane Carl Theodor Dreyer . In 1933 the Jew Bittmann had to leave Germany.

From 1934 to 1938, before anti-Semitic laws also came into effect in Italy, Bittmann, whose first name occasionally had to be Italianized to Giovanni, was employed in a number of productions by well-known directors of the Mussolini regime such as Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia , Mario Camerini and Goffredo Alessandrini . He also took care of the sound for productions of the Jewish refugees from Germany Max Ophüls and Kurt Gerron . In the complex mercenary strip Condottieri , there was a renewed collaboration with Trenker.

In 1939 Bittmann left Italy, which had meanwhile become dangerous for Jews, and in mid-1939 found a brief job in Swiss film, where he was in charge of sound engineering for Leopold Lindtberg's important crime film production, Wachtmeister Studer . In the same year Hans Bittmann traveled on to Spain, where he found employment in the local film industry for the next few decades. It is currently not known when exactly Bittmann returned to his old home in Austria. He died at the age of 91 in Vienna at the beginning of 1997.

Filmography (selection)

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personal data
SURNAME Bittmann, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bittman, Hans; Bittman, Giovanni
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian sound engineer
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Tullnerbach , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1997
Place of death Vienna , Austria