Ludwig Gottschalk

Ludwig Gottschalk (born December 3, 1876 in Rheidt , German Reich ; died November 30, 1967 in Cali , Colombia ) was a German film distributor and producer , a pioneer of German cinematography.

Live and act

Gottschalk had probably received a commercial training before he established the first major film distributor in the Rhineland in 1910 with his company Düsseldorfer Film-Manufaktur. In that year he had succeeded in bringing out the Danish film Afgrunden with the Danish actress Asta Nielsen, who was completely unknown as a film actress, on December 3, 1910 in Germany (Düsseldorf) under the title Abfalls . The drama became huge business and prompted Gottschalk to set up his own production company.

For his first films he was able to win over the film novice Reinhard Bruck , who is already firmly established as a director at the theater . Under Gottschalk's aegis, the later famous film director Richard Oswald , who at that time (1911) was engaged as an actor like Bruck at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus , gained his first experience with the celluloid medium. Up until the outbreak of the First World War , Gottschalk produced both feature films and documentaries and, as a distributor, continued to concentrate on Danish films, which at the time were highly regarded in Germany, but also brought one or two French films onto the German market.

Gottschalk's decline was already apparent during the war, and during the entire silent film era of the Weimar Republic he hardly appeared as a film producer. Only with the advent of talkies did Ludwig Gottschalk attempt a comeback with historical materials, most recently (in the winter of 1931/32) even with a Rasputin film with the superstar Conrad Veidt in the title role. The rise of the Nazis to power in 1933 suddenly meant Gottschalk's end in the German film industry. When exactly the Jewish film pioneer emigrated is just as unclear as his activities abroad during the last three decades of his life. Ludwig Gottschalk died very old in Colombia.

Filmography

• 1910: The funeral of King Edward
• 1911: raise the curtain
• 1911: Zouza, screenplay by Reinhard Bruck
• 1911: half-world
• 1912: Mormon Byens are blowing
• 1913: Madame Satan
• 1914: The big lot
• 1914: gold, love and crime
• 1914: Fascination
• 1915: The fateful hour at Svaneskjöld Castle
• 1915: The Ruins of Death
• 1916: Passion Play
• 1919: The sinner
• 1923: In the shadow of marriage
• 1930: Scapa Flow
• 1931: Shooting festival in Schilda
• 1931: Elisabeth of Austria
• 1932: Rasputin

Web links

• Ludwig Gottschalk in: Film pioneers on the Rhine and Ruhr
• Ludwig Gottschalk in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Ludwig Gottschalk at filmportal.de
• Düsseldorf film manufacturer Ludwig Gottschalk at filmportal.de
• Gottschalk Tonfilm-Produktions GmbH at filmportal.de