Luise Fleck

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Luise Fleck , also Luise Kolm-Fleck , née Luise Veltée actually Aloisia, also Louise (born August 1, 1873 in Vienna ; † March 15, 1950 ibid) was the second female film director in the world after the French Alice Guy-Blaché . With her first husband Anton Kolm , she founded the “First Austrian Cinema Film Industry” in 1910, the Viennese art film industry that emerged from it in 1911 and Vita-Film in 1919 . Between 1926 and 1933 she lived in Berlin, then returned to Vienna and emigrated to Shanghai at the last minute in 1940 . Her son was the Viennese film director Walter Kolm-Veltée (1910–1999), whose brother, who was a few years older, was called Ludwig.

Live and act

Luise Fleck was born on August 1, 1873 as the daughter of the Viennese Stadtpanoptikum founder Louis Veltée and the noblewoman Nina Veltée from Lyon . She was the younger sister of Claudius Veltée , who also worked in film. Luise Veltée worked at the till in her father's business as a child.

In January 1910 she founded the “ First Austrian Cinema Industry ” together with her first husband, Anton Kolm , and Jakob Fleck . They receive financial support from Luise's father, Louis Veltée, among others. The company's first productions are short documentaries from Vienna and other parts of the Austrian monarchy, where they have to fight the enormous French competition that dominated the Austrian market before the First World War .

Luise Kolm, as she was still called back then, was primarily responsible for the fact that the studio, as a producer of socially critical dramas in which class conflicts and ideological questions were dealt with, opposed the standard productions of other production companies of the time. Eduard Sekler , who is an actor in her film production company , once said in “Filmgeschichte (n) aus Österreich” (episode 2, ORF, 1970) “Luise Kolm is a brilliant all-round talent, especially as her husband Kolm only took care of the finances - she did everything, she stuck Films, made the scripts and helped her brother in the laboratory. Without their drive function, the continued existence of the company would have been questionable. "

In 1919 she founded “Vita Film” with Anton Kolm , but five years later it went bankrupt.

After Anton Kolm's death in 1922, she married her long-time co-director Jakob Fleck in 1924 , and the two were known as the “directing couple” in the 1920s . From 1926 they lived in Germany and worked for Berlin production companies. a. for Liddy Hegewald and Ufa . During this period they made 30 to 40 films, sometimes producing nine films a year. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the family returned to Vienna because Jakob Fleck was Jewish. In Vienna and Prague they produced for "Hegewald-Film". Son Walter Kolm-Veltée , who trained as a sound engineer at Tobis-Film , is the pro forma director. When the National Socialists came to power in Austria in 1938 and the Austrian film industry was under the control of the Reich Chamber of Culture within a very short time , there was finally no more work for the “directing couple”.

In 1940, after Jacob Fleck was released from Dachau concentration camp , the two went into exile in Shanghai . The Chinese director Fei Mu co-directed the film Sons and Daughters of the World with them . It is the only collaboration between Chinese and foreign film artists before the founding of the People's Republic of China and was premiered on October 4, 1941 at the Jindu Theater in Shanghai. In 1947, the year Austria's first post-war studio opened , the Belvedere-Film founded by August Diglas , Emmerich Hanus and Elfi von Dassanowsky , the two returned to Austria to plan their comeback, which however never succeeded. Luise Kolm-Fleck died in 1950, her husband Jacob three years later.

Luise's son from his first marriage, Walter Kolm-Veltée, later also became a respected director, producer and screenwriter. In 1952 he founded Austria's first film academy at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts . His Beethoven adaptation Eroica , which appeared in 1949 and starred Ewald Balser , Oskar Werner and Judith Holzmeister , is considered one of the most successful Austrian films of all time. Like his parents before, Walter Kolm-Veltée also helped develop a new entertainment medium: television .

The Austrian film women network FC Gloria has been awarding the Louise Fleck Prize since 2018 . The first prize winner is the camerawoman and producer Caroline Bobek.

plant

In 1911 her first work was published as a co-director: Die Glückspuppe . In the same year other dramas followed with the titles Der Dorftrottel , Tragedy of a Factory Girl and Just a Poor Man . In 1913 her directorial and producer works, The Psychiatrist and The Proletarian Heart, were premiered .

During the First World War she directed the pro- Habsburg propaganda dramas Mit Herz und Hand fürs Vaterland (1915) and Mit Gott für Kaiser und Reich (1916). The double suicide appeared in 1918 .

She dealt with Austrian literature in the films Die Ahnfrau and Lumpazivagabundus , both from 1919. From 1911 to 1922, the year in which her husband Anton died, Luise Fleck was director or co-director of over 45 films.

Other works by her were the film adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's civil tragedy Liebelei in 1927 and Wenn die soldiers ... in 1931. The pastor of Kirchfeld was shown in cinemas in 1937. It was Luise and Jacob Fleck's first sound film production, based on a drama by Ludwig Anzengruber from 1870. Thought as anti-Nazi and pro-Catholic "Austria propaganda", the film was not recognized as such and misinterpreted and rejected by the critics. Luise Kolms-Fleck had previously filmed Anzengruber's play in 1914 and 1926.

In total, Luise Kolm wrote at least 18 screenplays, directed 53 times and was the producer of 129 films. Other information (e.g. in Markus Nepf's diploma thesis) assume far higher numbers.

Filmography (selection)

as a director:

literature

  • Markus Nepf: The pioneering work of Anton Kolm, Louise Velteé / Kolm / Fleck and Jacob Fleck up to the beginning of the 1st World War . Thesis. Vienna 1991 (ÖFA Vienna).
  • Guoqiang Teng: Vanishing Point Shanghai. Luise and Jakob Fleck in China 1939–1946 . In: Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek (SDK): Film-Exil , Vol. 4. edition text + kritik, Munich 1994.
  • Robert von Dassanowsky: Female Visions: Four Female Austrian Film Pioneers . In: Modern Austrian Literature , Vol. 32 (1999), pp. 126-138.
  • Ulrike Jürgens: Louise, light and shadow: the film pioneer Louise Kolm-Fleck . Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-85476-599-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maya McKechneay: Louise Fleck: Austria's forgotten film pioneer orf.at, February 20, 2019, accessed February 21, 2019.
  2. ^ Anton Thaller (Ed.): Austrian Filmography, Volume 1: Feature Films 1906–1918. Filmarchiv Austria Publishing House, Vienna 2010, p. 56 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Fleck, Luise
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kolm-Fleck, Luise (full name); Veltée, Luise (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian film director
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 1950
Place of death Vienna