Ludwig Berger (director)

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Ludwig Berger (born January 6, 1892 in Mainz ; died May 18, 1969 in Schlangenbad ; actually Ludwig Bamberger ) was a German director and writer. Berger is one of the pioneers of the television game .

Life

The son of the banker Franz Bamberger and his wife Anna Klara, b. Lewino, graduated from the Grand Ducal Hessian High School in 1910 . He studied art history and German in Munich and Heidelberg. In 1914 he wrote his dissertation: Johann Conrad Seekatz. A German painter of the eighteenth century (Heidelberg 1916). When the war broke out, he volunteered, but was released early because of an inflammation of the periosteum.

Berger now worked as a stage director and staged his work Gärtnerin der Liebe , an adaptation of Mozart's opera La finta giardiniera, at the Mainz City Theater on March 25, 1916 . Here he worked for the first time with his brother, the production designer Rudolf Bamberger . In the following years, Berger performed several classical works, especially by Shakespeare , at Berlin theaters.

Berger also worked actively for the cinema. He made his directorial debut in 1920 with the period film The Judge of Zalamea , for which he also wrote the screenplay. His artistic breakthrough in film came with A Glass of Water and The Lost Shoe (both 1923). His first sound film (1930, shot in the USA ) was The Vagabond King , his best-known and most popular film was the musical Waltz War (1933, with Renate Müller , Hanna Waag , Willy Fritsch ).

In 1935 he emigrated to England via France and the Netherlands. Soon after, however, he returned to Germany, where he lived secluded in Schlangenbad . He tried to get commissions in Paris and London, but was able to realize only a few films such as Three Waltzes (1938) with Pierre Fresnay . For the lavish adventure film The Thief of Baghdad , Berger was originally engaged as the sole director, but got into a dispute with producer Alexander Korda and had to hand over most of the shooting to Michael Powell and Tim Whelan . During the Western campaign , Berger was in the Netherlands and escaped arrest with forged papers.

After the war, he traveled extensively and returned to Germany in 1947. He worked in the Federal Republic as a theater and radio play director, again mainly for Shakespeare classics. He also wrote a number of plays, prose works and monographs. He made particular contributions to the television game , of which he was one of the pioneers. Occasionally he also appeared as an actor in mostly smaller roles, for example in the early street sweepers As Far Your Feet Can Take and On the Green Beach of the Spree .

Berger is buried in the Mainz-Mombach forest cemetery. His extensive written estate is in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Ludwig Berger and his brother Rudolf Bamberger were 2nd cousins ​​of the pianist Grete Sultan .

Filmography

Fonts (selection)

  • We are made of the same stuff dreams are made of. Sum of a Life , 1953 (autobiography).
  • The unexpected life journey of Constanze Mozart , 1955.
  • When the music of love is food , 1957.
  • The earthly and the immortal. Romantic musicians , 1963.
  • Series Poetry and Reality No. 29: Shakespeare, Hamlet 1603 , transmission, interpretation and documentation by Ludwig Berger, Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1967.

Awards

literature

  • H (Herbert Holba): Berger, Ludwig. In: H. Holba, G. Knorr, P. Spiegel: Reclams deutsches Filmlexikon . Stuttgart 1984, pp. 31-33.
  • Hans-Michael Bock , Wolfgang Jacobsen (Ed.): Ludwig Berger. CineGraph / Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Hamburg / Berlin 1992, (film materials 1), 46 pp.
  • HMB (Hans-Michael Bock): Ludwig Berger - director, author. In: CineGraph, Volume 19, Edition text + kritik, Munich 1992, B1 – B10, F1 – F14.
  • Moritz von Bredow: rebellious pianist. The life of Grete Sultan between Berlin and New York . (Biography, 368 p., 60 figs. - Many references to Ludwig Berger and the family history of his mother) Schott Music , Mainz, 2012. ISBN 978-3-7957-0800-9
  • Christian Rogowski: A shot of champagne in the blood. Ludwig Berger's musical film comedy EIN WALZERTRAUM (1925). In: Filmblatt Volume 18, No. 51 Spring 2013, pp. 3–12.
  • Christian Rogowski: Solidarity with home and a lack of recognition. Ludwig Berger's ceremonial address to Johannes Brahms. In: Hamburg Key Documents on German-Jewish History, March 29, 2019, https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:article-248.de.v1 .
  • NN: Nekrolog für Ludwig Berger, in Theater im Exil 1933–1945. Ed. Walter Huder . Akademie der Künste (Berlin) 1973, without ISBN (exhibition October 21 - November 18, 1973 with additional film retrospective - further necrologists for Ernst Deutsch Fritz Kortner , Leonard Steckel are in the book, as their archives in the AdK at that time opened)
  • Berger, Ludwig. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 2: Bend Bins. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-598-22682-9 , pp. 187-194.
  • Kay Less : 'In life, more is taken from you than given ...'. Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. P. 94 ff., ACABUS-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Thief of Baghdad (1940). Retrieved October 27, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Ludwig Berger Archive inventory overview on the website of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
personal data
SURNAME Berger, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bamberger, Ludwig (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director and writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1969
Place of death Snake bath