Hans Feld

Hans Nathan Feld (born July 15, 1902 in Berlin , † July 15, 1992 in London ) was a German film critic .

Life

The son of the businessman Herrmann Feld and his wife Hermine, b. Reiner grew up in a liberal, Prussian-Jewish milieu and his mother introduced him to literature, theater and opera at an early age. In November 1918 he was second chairman of the revolutionary student council at the Sophiengymnasium . 1920–24 he studied law at the universities of Berlin, Freiburg / Breisgau and Würzburg and graduated with the dissertation The responsibility of ministers as the basis of modern democracy .

From 1926 he worked - first as a freelancer, then as an editor - for the Film-Kurier , the specialist journal of the German film industry that has been published since 1919. His articles appeared under numerous abbreviations and pseudonyms, including a. HF, haf, -d, Ulu and Hans-Heinrich Wins. As the successor to Willy Haas , he became editor-in-chief and chief editor.

In addition to his regular reviews, he campaigned for the avant-garde in his articles, supported the union organization of filmmakers in the DACHO and wrote about the "Russian films". His friends and acquaintances included the film director Sergej M. Eisenstein , the actors Fritz Rasp and Conrad Veidt , the composer Edmund Meisel , the producer Erich Pommer and the scriptwriters Béla Balázs and Carl Mayer . In 1927, he made the art historian Lotte Eisner become interested in film and brought her to the film courier.

In 1932, Feld left the editorial team and went to Aafa-Film AG as a dramaturge and production manager . But shortly after the National Socialists came to power , Feld had to flee into exile in Prague in March 1933 .

There he founded the German- language monthly magazine Die Critique, which was published until July 1935, with the German-Czech supplement Kulturni Most - Die Kulturbrücke . He also wrote for other organs such as the Prague Press and the Jewish Revue . He also worked as a screenwriter and editor as well as a dialogue director for German language versions of Czech film productions.

In 1935 he moved on to London, where he was an important contact person for the exiles. At first he remained connected to the film, worked with the left-wing filmmakers John Grierson , Ivor Montagu and Alberto Cavalcanti , and was briefly editor of the magazine World Film News . In 1937, Feld finished his film work for decades and worked as a grocery importer.

In 1947 he was naturalized as a British citizen. He became a member of Chatham House - The Royal Institute for International Affairs and was involved in Jewish organizations, for example as chairman of Zion House in his home town of London-Hampstead. As a board member of the Leo Baeck Institute in London, which is dedicated to researching the history of the Jews in Germany, he was active in the 1960s. For his yearbook he wrote an overview of the importance of Jewish filmmakers in the German film industry. With the photographer and filmmaker Hans G. Casparius , who also emigrated to London , he founded the production company Music in Vision, Ltd., which produces cultural films.

From the late 1970s onwards, Feld was rediscovered primarily by employees of the Deutsche Kinemathek and CineGraph as a source of information on the German film industry during the Weimar period. In 1982 Werner Sudendorf and Hans-Michael Bock recorded a video interview with him lasting several hours. In the same year, the German Film Prize honored him with a gold film ribbon for many years of outstanding work in German film. He supported his former colleague Lotte H. Eisner in researching her monographs on Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Fritz Lang .

In the spring of 1989 Feld and his wife Käte, née Behr, with whom he had been married since 1928, returned to the Babelsberg film site after almost sixty years to work on location for the TV portrait Das Cabinet des Erich Pommer by Hans-Michael Bock and Ute T. Schneider to report on his encounters with the producer.

Hans Feld died of cancer on his 90th birthday on July 15, 1992 in London-Hampstead.

Award

• 1982 German Film Prize: Filmband in Gold for many years of outstanding work in German film.

literature

• Hans Feld: Hans Casparius - the man with the three eyes . In: Hans-Michael Bock, Jürgen Berger (eds.): Photo: Casparius. Berlin / West: Foundation Deutsche Kinemathek u. a. 1978.
• Hans Feld: Potsdam versus Weimar or How Otto Fee won the Seven Years War . In: Axel Marquardt, Heinz Rathsack (ed.): Prussia in film. Reinbek: Rowohlt 1981.
• Hans Feld: Jews in the Development of the German Film Industry. Notes from the Recollections of a German Film Critic . In: Leo Baeck Institute. Year Book XXVII. London: Secker & Warburg 1982.
• Hans Feld: 3 x chisels. Edmund Meisel kaleidoscope . In: Werner Sudendorf (ed.): The silent film musician Edmund Meisel. Frankfurt: Deutsches Filmmuseum 1984, (Cinematograph 1).
• Hans Feld: Henny Porten - Side lights and reflections of a contemporary . In: Helga Belach (ed.): Henny Porten. The first German film star 1890–1960. Berlin / West: Haude & Spener 1986.
• Hans Feld: Globetrotter With a Magic Camera. In Memoriam Hans Casparius . In: AJR Information, London, No. 8, August 1986.
• Hans-Michael Bock: "... a conscious writing with a goal" . In: epd Church and Film, No. 7, July 1982.
• Hans-Michael Bock: Hans Feld - film critic . In: CineGraph, Lg. 21, Munich: edition text + kritik 1983.
• Rolf Aurich, Wolfgang Jacobsen (Red.): Hans Feld in Exile . FilmExil, No. 22, Munich: edition text + kritik 2005, ISBN 3-88377-807-9 .
• Wilhelm Sternfeld , Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933-1945. A bio-bibliography , Schneider, Heidelberg / Darmstadt, 1962