Hans Steinhoff

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Hans Steinhoff (born March 10, 1882 in Marienberg , Saxony , † April 20, 1945 in Glienig , Brandenburg ) was a German film director .

Life

Steinhoff began studying medicine in Leipzig , which he broke off. He decided to become an actor and made his debut in Braunschweig in 1903 at the touring theater "Nachtasyl". He then worked as a theater actor and singer in Munich and, shortly before the First World War, advanced to senior director at the Metropol-Theater in Berlin . From 1914 he worked as a director at variety stages in Vienna .

In 1921 he directed an adaptation of Gottfried Keller's short story Clothes Make People for the first time . In the period from 1921 to 1933 Steinhoff made numerous films in various genres : from comedy to literary film adaptation to melodrama . He also worked with the then screenwriter and later film director Billy Wilder , for example with Scampolo, a child of the street (1932) with Dolly Haas .

Steinhoff already felt before 1933 Nazi ideas and was committed in the era of National Socialism from the conformist patronized systematically press.

For his film Hitlerjunge Quex (1933), based on the novel of the same name by Karl Aloys Schenzinger , he received the gold badge of honor of the Hitler Youth . The film met with the unanimous approval of the National Socialist leadership. Even Joseph Goebbels , the comparable "Zeitfilme" in the service of Nazi propaganda such. B. SA man Brand or Hans Westmar did not particularly appreciate as "convictions", rated the film higher because of its tight staging. As a reserved film, the film may only be shown publicly with restrictions in the Federal Republic of Germany , which also applies to Steinhoff's Nazi propaganda film Yesterday and Today from 1938.

Gustaf Gründgens played the main role in Dance on the Volcano (1938). Despite excellent acting achievements, the dramaturgy of the historical material from the time of Charles X appears confused. Steinhoff himself claimed to have proposed the film material based on motifs Jean-Gaspard Deburau to the studios for 15 years in vain, because he always stuck to Gründgens as the leading actor. Robert Koch, the fighter of death (1939) stylized the discoverer of the tuberculosis pathogen as a leader. In the film Die Geierwally (1940) a strong woman became the main character in line with the requirements of state propaganda. Even with Rembrandt (1942), who cannot be denied artistic aspirations, the influence of National Socialist cultural control is unmistakable. During the filming in the occupied Netherlands between October 18, 1941 and April 14, 1942, Steinhoff also appeared, according to eyewitnesses, as a Nazi loyal to the line, with a demonstrative Hitler salute and with a party badge, which had never happened in Berlin.

Steinhoff was the first to flee from Prague to Berlin after filming his last film Shiva und die Galgenblume (1945), which could not be fully completed due to the German surrender and which interrupted the film careers of some actors for several years . Shortly afterwards he tried to flee from the encircled Berlin by air with the last Lufthansa plane to Madrid . All occupants were killed when the aircraft was probably shot down by Red Army fighter pilots near Luckenwalde or Glienig in Brandenburg.

Hans Steinhoff in the judgment of contemporaries and posterity

In his 1975 autobiography "Buy yourself a colorful balloon" , the screenwriter and director Géza von Cziffra made negative comments about Steinhoff. This was very unpopular with the actors because of its excessive loyalty to the line. OW Fischer said about Steinhoff: “He is browner than Goebbels and blacker than Heinrich Himmler .” Hans Albers called Steinhoff “the biggest asshole of the century” and a “pig”. Steinhoff's favorite saying was “The Minister wishes it that way!”, Whereby the “Minister” meant Goebbels. Cziffra continues: “Steinhoff, who in the last days of the war threatened to be charged and imprisoned for every skeptical statement, was the first to leave Prague without finishing his film. He went to Berlin, and from there he wanted to flee on April 20 with the last Lufthansa plane that flew from the already encircled Berlin to Spain . But the plane crashed after shelling near Glienig (Brandenburg). ”He was buried with the other victims of the crash in the Glienig cemetery.

Billy Wilder also expressed himself disparagingly about Steinhoff, who had filmed several of Wilder's scripts: “A man without any talent. He was a Nazi, a hundred percent even. But there were also many Nazis who had talent. I would never say that Leni Riefenstahl had no talent ... But I say about Steinhoff that he was an idiot, but not because he was a Nazi, he was also a very bad director ”.

Frederik D. Tunnat described Hans Steinhoff in his biography of the screenwriter Karl Gustav Vollmoeller , with whom Steinhoff had worked at Inge Larsen in 1923 , as "the servant (...) sorcerer's apprentice of his National Socialist masters Goebbels and Hitler ". Georg C. Klaren wrote about Steinhoff in an essay that he was a "boastful as well as prominent" director.

Filmography

Web links

literature

  • Horst Claus: Films for Hitler - The career of the Nazi star director Hans Steinhoff. Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-902781-27-7 .
  • Géza von Cziffra: “Buy yourself a colorful balloon.” Memories of gods and demigods . Herbig, Munich and Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-7766-0708-4 , pp. 304-305.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Occasionally Pfaffenhofen is mentioned as the place of birth instead of Marienberg , so also in the Great Bavarian Biographical Encyclopedia, KG Saur, Munich. 2005
  2. ↑ Der Deutsche Film 2.4, October 1937, p. 110; Interview portrait Hans Steinhoff speaks out . In: Film-Kurier, January 15, 1935.
  3. ^ Werner Faulstich: Film history . UTB Fink, Paderborn 2005, p. 96.
  4. ^ Felix Moeller: The film minister. Goebbels and the film in the Third Reich . Berlin 1998, p. 152f.
  5. ^ Thomas Arnold, Martin Loiperdinger: Martyr legends in Nazi films . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1991, p. 32.
  6. ↑ Manuel Köppen: Request concert - The film in times of the Blitzkrieg . In: Claudia Glunz, Artur Pełka, Thomas F. Schneider (eds.): Information Warfare: the role of the media (literature, art, photography, film, television, theater, press, correspondence) in the representation and interpretation of war . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2007, p. 385ff., Here p. 386.
  7. ↑ With reservation at dhm.de.
  8. ^ Hans Steinhoff: My film work with Gustaf Gründgens . In: Licht-Bild-Bühne 188, August 12, 1938.
  9. ↑ Manuel Köppen, Erhard Schütz : Art of Propaganda: The Film in the Third Reich . Publishing house Peter Lang, Bern u. a., 2nd revised. 2008 edition, ISBN 978-3-03911-727-7 , pp. 70-75.
  10. ↑ Ingo Schiweck: "(...) because we prefer to sit in the cinema than in sackcloths." The German feature film in the occupied Netherlands 1940–1945 . Waxmann, Münster / New York 2002, p. 336.
  11. ↑ So z. E.g. in the case of Elisabeth Flickenschildt , who only appeared in front of the camera in 1949. See Horst O. Hermanni: From Dorothy Dandridge to Willy Fritsch: Das Film ABC . BoD - Books on Demand, 2009, p. 346.
  12. ↑ Dorin Popa: OW Fischer: his films, his life . Heyne, Munich 1989, p. 38.
  13. ↑ See Dorin Popa: OW Fischer: his films, his life . Heyne, Munich 1989, p. 38.
  14. ↑ See Ed Sikov: On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder . Hyperion, New York 1998, pp. 18, 33.
  15. ↑ Quoted in: Heinz Gerd Rasner, Konrad Wulf: Billy Wilders Films , 1979.
  16. ↑ See Joe Hembus , Christa Bandmann: Klassiker des Deutschen Tonfilms, 1930–1960 . Goldmann, Munich 1980, p. 86: “The Steinhoff, I do remember him. That's the man who later made Quex, the Hitler Youth. That was a shit, the Steinhoff, a man without any talent ”.
  17. ^ Frederik D. Tunnat: Karl Vollmoeller. Poet and cultural manager. A biography . tredition, Hamburg 2008, p. 453.
  18. ↑ Georg C. Klaren in From the film idea to the screenplay , Verlag Bruno Henschel and Son, Berlin 1949, p. 29.
  19. ^ Rolf Giesen, Manfred Hobsch: Hitler Youth Quex, Jud Süss and Kolberg. The propaganda films of the Third Reich. Documents and materials on Nazi films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, p. 34.
  20. ^ Vaclav Demling: The propaganda film in the Third Reich using the example of Hans Steinhoff's "The old and the young king" . GRIN Verlag 2009.
  21. ^ Lutz Schmökel: The feature film "Robert Koch - the fighter of death" in the context of anti-Semitic propaganda in the Third Reich . GRIN Verlag 2007.
  22. ↑ Ulrike Reim: The "Robert Koch" film (1939) by Hans Steinhoff, Art or Propaganda? In: Medicine in the feature film of National Socialism . Edited by Udo Benzenhöfer , Wolfgang U. Eckart , Tecklenburg 1990, pp. 22-33.
  23. ↑ Review In Die Welt, September 10, 2013, available online , controlled September 16, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Steinhoff, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film director
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Marienberg , Saxony
DATE OF DEATH April 20, 1945
Place of death Glienig , Brandenburg