Hans H. King

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Heinz König (born August 19, 1912 in Berlin ; † November 13, 2003 in Munich ) was a German film director , producer and screenwriter . As a writer he wrote several poems and several novels.

Life

Hans H. König was born in Berlin as the son of the businessman Rudolf König and his wife Jeanette, where he initially worked as a freight forwarder for the company "Ulrich Rieck und Söhne" after high school . Since the company had been classified as important to the war effort, he was not drafted into the Wehrmacht .

In 1945 he turned his back on his hometown and settled in the small town of Drentwede near Bremen . From here he tried to gain a foothold as a writer. Since 1942 he had known Hermann Kasack , who worked at S. Fischer Verlag (later Suhrkamp) as chief editor . König hoped through him to be able to place his works at Suhrkamp Verlag . Kasack made contact with the Hamburg-born playwright Hans Erich Nossack , who found himself in a similar situation to König. He, too, did not appear as a poet during the Nazi era. König was in regular correspondence with Nossack between 1945 and 1947. Unlike this, however, König did not succeed in establishing himself as a writer. Although he had his first successes with the publication of his volume of poetry "Die Lichtung" and the printing of some poems in the magazine "Die Wandlung" in 1947, König soon afterwards buried his dream of becoming a poet and looked around for another field of activity. In the same year he gave up his remote place of residence and moved to Munich.

With the help of his older brother Richard , who founded the Lens Film GmbH together with Josef von Baky after the war , König came to film. He initially worked as an assistant director at Bakys Film ... und über uns der Himmel (1947) and also worked as an editor for the film company. After writing the scripts for the films Die fidele Gasstelle (1950), Alles für die Firma (1950) and Drei Kavaliere (1951), he finally switched to directing and was able to direct his first feature film with Der Vorteilhaft (1951/52) . As with most of his subsequent films, his brother Richard was the producer .

King's next film, Roses bloom on the Heidegrab (1952) with the young Ruth Niehaus in the lead role, stood out clearly from the then popular Heimatfilm production thanks to its gloomy mood . Perhaps that's why the film didn't turn out to be a particularly big hit at the box office.

In 1953 his brother married the Burgtheater actress Edith Mill , who would become the king's preferred leading actress in the following years. In the following year he was able to engage his sister-in-law for the comedy Beloved Miss Doctor . Mill also took on the leading female role in the Heimat films Der Fischer vom Heiligensee , Das Erbe vom Pruggerhof (both 1955) and Hot Harvest (1956). The passion drama Hot Harvest was a remarkable, if not entirely successful, attempt to copy elements of the neorealist film ( Bitter Rice ). The following year - with the gradual ebb of the Heimatfilm wave - König ended his career as a film director. Jägerblut (1957), also with the participation of Edith Mill, was the last feature film he directed.

In the following years, König again devoted himself to writing and published several novels to be assigned to entertainment literature , including Legend of Passion and The Eighth Heaven . Both were published by Schneekluth-Verlag Darmstadt . Several of his novels, which he u. a. published by Bastei or Kelter , published under the pseudonym Henry van Dam.

König had two children with his wife Käte (born brother-in-law): Ulrich (born 1949) became a director ("Meister Eder und seine Pumuckl", "Gräfliches Roulette", "Büro, Büro", "For Heaven's sake"). The second son Manfred was born in 1952 and works as a restorer. Hans H. König died on November 13, 2003 in Munich.

Filmography

Director

Screenwriter

  • 1950: The cheerful gas station
  • 1950: Everything for the company
  • 1951: Three Cavaliers (alternatively: The three village cavaliers)
  • 1952: The conceited sick man
  • 1952: Roses bloom on the heather grave (In Austria: Dorothee)
  • 1954: The small town wants to go to sleep (In Austria: The Seven Sinner)
  • 1956: Two Bavarians in St. Pauli (idea)
  • 1957: The cheerful detectives - (idea)
  • 1963: My wife Susanne (TV series, 20 episodes)

producer

  • 1956: Two Bavarians in St. Pauli

bibliography

Books by Hans H. König (selection)

  • 1947: The clearing (poems)
  • 1963: Legend of Passion (novel)
  • 1963: The eighth heaven (novel)
  • 1974: Freshly kissed is half the battle (novel)

Literature about Hans H. König

  • Gabriele Söhling (Ed.): Hans Erich Nossack. Give a sign of life again soon. Correspondence 1943-1956. Volume 2: Commentary. Frankfurt am Main 2001
  • Gabriele Söhling (Ed.): Hans Erich Nossack. The diaries 1943-1977. Volume 3: Commentary. 2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main 2001
  • Joachim Szodrzynski: "If I don't go to the surface now, it will never happen." Strategies of writers to establish themselves in the literary field after 1945. Using the example of Hans Erich Nossack and Hans H. König. In: Ludwig Fischer, Klaas Jarchow, Horst Ode and Hans-Gerd Winter (eds.): "Then the winners were there." Studies on literary culture in Hamburg 1945–1950. Hamburg: Dölling & Galitz 1999 (series of publications by the Hamburg Cultural Foundation, Vol. 9), pp. 85-109.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Johann Caspar Glenzdorf: Glenzdorfs international film lexicon. Biographical manual for the entire film industry. Volume 2: Hed – Peis. Prominent-Filmverlag, Bad Münder 1961, DNB 451560744 , p. 865.
  2. ↑ See: Gabriele Söhling (Ed.): Hans Erich Nossack. Give a sign of life again soon. Correspondence 1943-1956. Volume 2: Commentary. Frankfurt am Main 2001, page 42 and p. 68
  3. ↑ In the literary magazine " Die Neue Rundschau " published by S. Fischer Verlag , König had already published several poems in 1943, and three essays followed the following year. For more information, see Söhling, Nossack , Volume 2, page 43
  4. ↑ He, too, was able to include some of his poems in the "Neue Rundschau".
  5. ^ According to Söhling, Hans Erich Nossack. The diaries 1943-77. Commentary volume, Frankfurt am Main 2001, p. 330.
personal data
SURNAME King, Hans H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES König, Hans Heinz (full name); Dam, Henry van (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German screenwriter, producer and film director
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 2003
Place of death Munich