Oskar Messter

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Oskar Messter
Oskar Messter
Nude sculptures (1903)

Oskar Eduard Messter (born November 22, 1866 in Berlin , † December 6, 1943 in Tegernsee ; originally Oskar Meßter ) was a German film pioneer.

Life

Messter was born as the son of the optician Eduard Meßter and his wife Marie Wilhelmine. After finishing school, he trained as an optician himself in his father's company, which had specialized in the manufacture of optical and precision mechanical devices. In addition, he completed a traineeship in the Paul Waechter optical workshop . At the age of 28 he took over his father's business.

In 1887 he married Margarete Wittmann. The son Eduard Oskar Meßter emerged from the marriage in 1893. By 1888, Oskar Messter completed a year of military service.

From 1896 Messter brought the first usable film projectors (with Maltese cross connection ) to the market and in November of the same year he opened the first German artificial light studio in Friedrichstrasse and took over the Unter den Linden theater as a cinema . A short time later he founded his own studio, where the first silent films were made. They showed, among other things, the German imperial couple, nature photos and aerial photos of Berlin, which were made from a balloon. In 1903 he performed sound images for the first time by coupling the film projector and a gramophone and at the same time playing records that had previously been recorded synchronously; he called this device a biophone . It was presented at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis . With almost 300 films produced, Messter advanced to become the impresario of German film during the imperial era and helped actresses such as Henny Porten to become a star. In 1912, Messter and Friedrich Simon Archenhold made the world's first film recording of a solar eclipse with the giant telescope from the Treptow observatory (today: Archenhold-Sternwarte Berlin-Treptow) (Sources: Messter Memoirs, Archenhold Observatory Archive)

Messter was also a co-founder of the German Opticians' Association and assessor in the master's examination committee for Berlin and Potsdam. In 1909 he had the spelling of his name changed. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War , he produced the first German newsreel from documentaries on war events, which he produced as a lieutenant in the press department of the General Staff . The Messter newsreel was first shown on October 23, 1914. Oskar Messter worked out the censorship provisions for photographic and cinematographic images for the General Staff . Images of current war events, dead, seriously injured, weapons, airplanes and military port facilities were generally prohibited.

Aerial photo measurement in the First World War

In 1915, Messter was commissioned to develop a series of cameras for aerial reconnaissance and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class for its successful development .

In his memorandum “Film as a political advertising medium”, written in August 1916, he justified the need for German propaganda films as an answer to the “anti-German films” of the Entente states. In the same year he founded together with the Austrian filmmakers Sascha Kolowrat Krakowsky the Sascha-Messter film which successor of the Austria subsidiary of Messter film was and the (united) from the spring of 1916 Kolowrat Messter week produced a Newsreel of the Austro-Hungarian Film Propaganda providing war reports , which was a cinematic focus during the 1916 war exhibition in Vienna . Messter had the machine gun camera, a target practice device for training gunnery, patented.

After the end of the war, Messter sold his companies in Berlin and Vienna for 5.3 million gold marks (5,884,519 euros) , which were incorporated into the newly founded UFA and of which he was a member of the supervisory board from 1925. At the end of 1918 he acquired the Zum Leitenbauer house in Tegernsee, which he was later to move into. His friends there included the opera and lied singer Julius Patzak , the popular actor Albert (Bertl) Schultes and the writer Ludwig Ganghofer . In the 1920s he only produced one film with The Jump Into Life .

In 1926, as a representative of the German film industry, he took part in the First International Film Congress in Paris and donated the Oskar Messter Medal for special services to cinematography , of which he was the first to receive a prize. Messter's first marriage was divorced; In 1928 he married Antonie Maria Theresia König (1898–1978).

Henny Porten with Oskar Messter, International Film Congress 1935

From 1930 Messter withdrew from the film business and moved into his house in Tegernsee, which he had lived in permanently since 1939. A street there was posthumously named after him. He still held positions at the Filmoberprüfstelle Berlin and the German Film Association , which produced the film Girls in Uniform in 1931 . In 1932 he left his extensive collection of cinematographic equipment to the Deutsches Museum in Munich .

During the Weimar Republic, Messter became a member of the Bund der Frontsoldaten , which was considered anti-democratic and anti-Jewish, and after 1933 he was celebrated by the National Socialists as the old master of the German film industry. His cinematic works can be seen ambiguously, as he used his talent for war and the new medium of propaganda film not to educate, but to manipulate the audience. On the occasion of the screening of the first films from the Reichsfilmarchiv in the Harnack House organized by the Reichsfilmkammer, Messter took part in the International Film Congress, which took place from April 25th to May 1st, 1935 in the Filmtheater am Friedrichshain in Berlin.

Oskar Messter with his wife Antonie in the mountains

In 1936, Messter was made an honorary senator of the Technical University of Berlin . In the same year he published his memoir Mein Weg mit dem Film . The last award Messter received was the Goethe Medal for Art and Science in 1941 .

He spent the last two years of his life withdrawn and in poor health with his wife in his house on Tegernsee. Messter died on December 6, 1943 and was buried in the cemetery in Tegernsee. On the grave slab it says about him: "Old master of cinematography / as an inventor, researcher and pioneer founder of the German cinema industry". His second wife, Antonie, born on February 26, 1898, died on March 17, 1978 and was buried in his grave.

Aftermath

When his Berlin apartment was closed in 1944, the last parts of the Messter archive came to the Tegernsee. Messter's second wife Antonie (1898–1978) was accepted as a member of the Reichsfilmkammer in November 1944 as film archivist and practiced this profession until her death. In individual cases she allowed an evaluation of her deceased husband's papers.

Productions (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : Oskar Messter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Messter's biography at Filmportal
  2. ^ Messter's Projection GmbH. In: filmportal.de . German Film Institute , accessed October 7, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Klaus Kreimeier : Dream and Excess. The cultural history of early cinema. Zsolnay, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-552-05552-0 , p. 364 f.
  4. ^ Federal Archives - Oskar Messter - founder of the German cinema and film industry
  5. ^ Federal Archives - Oskar Messter - founder of the German cinema and film industry
  6. ↑ Daily news. (...) amusement indicator. (...) Small stage (elite cinema) (...). In:  Neues Wiener Journal , No. 8081/1916 (XXIV. Volume), April 30, 1916, p. 21, top right. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nwj.
  7. ↑ The wartime in Austria. Cinemas in the war exhibition Vienna 1916. In:  Neuigkeits -Welt-Blatt , No. 109/1916 (XLIII. Year), May 12, 1916, p. 7, center right. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nwb.
  8. ^ Tegernsee news. (PDF; 3.6 MB) A film pioneer on his 150th birthday. (No longer available online.) Stadt Tegernsee, November 1, 2016, p. 22 , formerly in the original ; Retrieved December 8, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / publish.cmcitymedia.de  
  9. ↑ Oskar-Meßter-Strasse, 83684 Tegernsee
  10. ^ Internet Movie Database. Retrieved June 17, 2011 .
  11. ^ Inscription on the memorial plaque Beginnings of the film , Friedrichstrasse 16, Berlin
  12. ^ Federal Archives - Oskar Messter - founder of the German cinema and film industry
  13. ↑ Bundesarchiv R 55/99, Vol. 2, 1940–1943, 5.18.1 Awards for artists and scientists, award of the Goethe Medal for Art and Science
  14. ↑ a b Federal Archives - Oskar Messter - founder of the German cinema and film industry

Remarks

  1. ↑ Die Meßter Film u. Apparate Gesellschaft mb H. ( Vienna, VII. , Neubaugasse 25) was entered in the commercial register of the k. k. Commercial Court of Vienna registered. This company until the 1920s acting should have agreed informally with the operation Kolowrats to common (newsreel) productions as a commercial law registration of property in prestressing appearing Sascha (S / M) Messter or a Sascha-Messter film not must be proven (recorded companies in Adolph Lehmann ’s general housing indicator ). - For the establishment of the Messter Film u. Apparate Gesellschaft mb H. see: Company reports. (...). In:  Official Journal of the Wiener Zeitung , No. 13/1914, January 17, 1914, p. 68, column 3 above. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz.
personal data
SURNAME Messter, Oskar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Messter, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1943
Place of death Tegernsee