Peter H. Backhaus

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Peter H. Backhaus (born June 3, 1922 in Hamburg ; † July 6, 2007 ) was a German filmmaker who gained greater fame in the 1950s through numerous travel documentaries.

Dream trip for three

Among other things, together with his wife Marlotte by that time very popular in Germany microcar Peter H. Backhaus in the 1950s Goggomobil a world tour undertaken and a documentary made about this trip.

The journey together began in Hamburg on October 15, 1957 and finally lasted until July 1962. The couple was greeted with great enthusiasm, with the participation of the press. The film, which was made in almost five years , was released in West German cinemas in March 1964 under the title "A Dream Journey for Three - Around the World in the Goggomobil" and was a huge box-office success at the time.

The trip took place in several stages over a period of five years. The first part from Germany via Greece and Turkey through the Orient to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam was done with a Goggomobil Coupé TS 300. A technical defect that could not be repaired and Japan's refusal to let the spare parts through customs made it necessary to change vehicles. For marketing reasons, Glas-GmbH, as the company's main sponsor , decided to provide the "large Goggomobil", the GLAS Isar T700, which has just been launched on the market . However, the company insisted that only this vehicle would later appear in the film. This meant that the entire first part of the journey had to be "re-shot" later with the new car.

The direct consequence of this is that the journey in the film runs in the opposite direction than in reality. The film takes you from Hamburg via Gibraltar through the Sahara to Nigeria , by ship to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil , from there via Central America to the USA . From San Francisco shipping to Japan , after a stay there shipping to Thailand , by land through Burma and India to Persia . Then back to the African continent, through Sudan to Egypt . From here it was shipped back to Hamburg.

In fact, the trip ran from Hamburg via Austria and Italy to Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Tibet, Nepal and again India. From Bombay by ship to Singapore, again by land through Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. From Saigon it went by ship to Japan and from there to the USA. There I made a "little detour" from San Francisco via Yellowstone National Park to Toronto / Canada and back to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, before the journey led down the Panamericana : Via Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica Panama to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. The next embarkation for Cape Town took place in Rio de Janeiro. From South Africa, the further route then led through what was then southern and northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe and Zambia), Tanganyika , Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Chad and Nigeria. From Lagos it was then back to Germany by plane.

Shortly after its theatrical screening, the film Traumreise mit Drei - Im Goggomobil around the world was lost as part of the general switch from nitro to safety film. It was only after almost 40 years that the original rolls of film by Jörg Heyen and Matthias Kirketerp were rediscovered in two banana boxes in the granary by Marlotte and Peter Backhaus, and the cinema film was almost completely reconstructed from them in painstaking detail. Even the original film sound was still present on magnetic tapes. In the documentary "In the Goggomobil around the world" (Director: Werner Klemm ) the WDR introduces the Backhaus couple and lets them comment on some scenes of the restored film from today's perspective. This reconstructed version was re-released on DVD together with the book in 2007.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Peter Backhaus passed away (viewed December 11, 2011)
  2. ↑ Marlotte Backhaus, b. Aue, born June 27, 1935 in Hamburg; † November 7, 2007 in Buchholz / Nordheide.
  3. ↑ Marlotte and Peter Backhaus with Matthias Kirketerp: "In the Goggo around the world - A dream trip in the 50s" , Christian-Verlag Munich, 2007, ISBN 978-3-88472-744-7

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personal data
SURNAME Backhaus, Peter H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH July 6, 2007