Peter Voigt (director)

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Peter Voigt 1993

Peter Voigt (born May 26, 1933 in Dessau ; † March 12, 2015 in Berlin ) was a German writer and director of documentary films .

Live and act

At the age of six, Peter Voigt, who was born in Dessau, came to the Polish area occupied by the German Wehrmacht , to Bromberg / Bydgoszcz , where his father Heinrich Voigt, an opera director and theater director , took over the theater there in 1939. Peter Voigt experienced the immediate post-war years in Braunschweig and finally passed his Abitur in an experimental music class at the Leibniz School on Nordplatz in Leipzig, where his father was called to the municipal theater in December 1949 . Peter Voigt began working here in 1952 asAssistant set designer .

On December 10, 1953, Peter Voigt - recommended by the theater director Wolfgang Böttcher - was allowed to present himself to Bertolt Brecht and was then employed as assistant director and dramaturgy at the Berliner Ensemble from April 1954 to 1958 . In June 1954 he was commissioned by Bertolt Brecht to view and organize the manuscript archive and his collection of graphic works belonging to his private library in his house at Chausseestrasse 125 . When Lotte Lenya rang the doorbell of Brecht's apartment while visiting East Berlin on April 30, 1955, Voigt - his youngest assistant - denied himself.

Supported by Ruth Berlau , Peter Voigt worked at the Berliner Ensemble as assistant to the director Benno Besson and the chief dramaturge and director Peter Palitzsch . During Brecht's lifetime, Voigt experienced rehearsals on the productions of The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Bertolt Brecht / Director: Bertolt Brecht, Premiere: October 7, 1954), Timpani and Trumpets ( George Farquhar / Director: Benno Besson, Premiere: September 19, 1955) , The hero of the western world ( John Millington Synge / Peter Hacks / Anna Elisabeth Wiede / directed by Peter Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth , premiere: May 11, 1956) as well as the Life of Galileo (Bertolt Brecht / directed by Bertolt Brecht, Erich Engel , premiere : January 15, 1957), in which he occasionally had to take on minor acting roles. Over the summer, Peter Voigt was invited by Helene Weigel and Brecht to spend the vacation time in their house in Buckow .

Inspired by the work of the Czech animator Jiří Trnka and after a failed attempt to produce animated interludes for Peter Palitzsch and his television production of Brecht's Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti in the style of the Schwejk illustrator Josef Lada , Peter Voigt left in 1959 to Dresden, where he worked for the DEFA studio for animated films as a colorist , phase draftsman and director until 1961 . His mentor there was the animated filmmaker Lothar Barke . The time in Dresden was followed by a period as a freelance director in East Berlin from 1961 and from 1969 as a writer and director in the H & S studio for the documentary filmmakers Gerhard Scheumann & Walter Heynowski .

From 1977 to 1982 Peter Voigt worked together with the photographer Arno Fischer on the concept and selection of the photos for the four stainless steel steles that flank Ludwig Engelhardt's Marx-Engels-Monument in the Marx-Engels-Forum in East Berlin. During this time he also worked on Konrad Wolf's six-part documentary Busch singt . After Wolf's death, Voigt completed the work together with Erwin Burkert.

When the H & S studio was closed in the autumn of 1982, Voigt switched to the DEFA studio for documentary films and after this - from 1983 to 1991 - worked as a freelancer. A large part of Peter Voigt's films was created in constant collaboration with the cameraman Christian Lehmann . Under the title Form and Transience. Homage Peter Voigt , Dok Leipzig presented a retrospective in 2013 with selected works by the documentarist.

His grave is in the French Cemetery I at Chausseestrasse 127 in Berlin-Mitte.

Films (selection)

  • PS zum Lachendes Mann ( laughing man) as a director (1966)
  • Love letters, directed together with Walter Heynowski (1966)
  • November Revolution (1968)
  • Hanns Otto: A man of a rare kind ; Moments for Later (1970)
  • Martha Lehmann, railway woman (1972)
  • The Golden Line, documenta (1972)
  • Friedrich Flick: The Tragedy (1973)
  • Theater work ; I'm a Fritz (1974)
  • The group " Floh de Cologne " (1975)
  • Jutta Hoffmann ME Song by Paul Dessau (1976)
  • Consequence (1976)
  • Probationary period (1977)
  • Busch sings - Part I Aurora - Morgenrot and Part IV, here co-director with Erwin Burkert (1982)
  • Photographs - Texts Marx, Music Bach (1983)
  • Standing on two horses - The Anarchist Erich Mühsam (1983)
  • Minipli (1986) with Jürgen Gütt
  • Stone grinds scissors (1987)
  • Atlantic / Etna - for Heiner Müller production of the wage pusher at the Deutsches Theater (1987)
  • Knabenjahre (1989) together with Christlieb Hirte and Christian Lehmann
  • Die Wunderwaffe (1990) with Thomas Schmitz-Bender
  • Metanoia - Reports of German Men (1991)
  • Wieland Förster - Protocol of an Imprisonment - Three Parts (1991)
  • Seelower Heights (1991)
  • Twilight - East Berlin bohemianism of the 50s (1993)
  • The place, the time, the death. A Heimatfilm (1994)
  • Bella Italia - Refuge On Recall (1996)
  • Yes Brecht (1998)
  • Epic Theater (1998)
  • I'm Busch (2000)
  • Spring Awakening (2002)
  • A Legacy (2004)
  • Bertolt Brecht - picture and model (2006)

Filmography

Prices

Biographical

  • The Zögling autobiographical essay by Peter Voigt in: Sinn und Form , issue 2/2004, p. 221
  • The Preferred One - A film sketch about Peter Voigt, documentary film director by Alexandra Czok, 45 minutes, Sunset Movie Production 2005
  • Der Zögling , radio essay by Peter Voigt, with Peter Voigt and Oliver Urbanski, director: Stefan Kanis, 54 minutes, MDR FIGARO 2006, first broadcast: August 10, 2006
  • in: Encounters with Brecht by Erdmut Wizisla, Ed., Lehmstedt-Verlag Leipzig 2009 ISBN 978-3-937146-77-5
  • Peter Voigt: The documentary filmmaker with Brecht and Godard in his blood , Knut Elstermann in conversation with documentary filmmaker and Brecht expert Peter Voigt, on the occasion of the Voigt homage at DOK Leipzig 2013, recorded on Thursday, October 31, 2013, broadcast: on 1. November 2013, at 6:05 pm, an event by MDR FIGARO in cooperation with Schauspiel Leipzig and DOK Leipzig.
  • Günter Agde (Ed.): Peter Voigt: sketches, reviews, essays, interviews . New Life, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-355-01874-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Message from MDR FIGARO, March 13, 2015
  2. ^ Thomas Knauf: An avowed optimist , in: "der Freitag", April 2, 2015, p. 23
  3. ^ The price of the elite - Ingrid Poss in conversation with Peter Voigt , in: The principle of curiosity: DEFA documentary filmmakers tell , Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 2012, pp. 193–221
  4. ↑ Ralf Schenk: Beauty and Pain - Christian Lehmann 75 , Neues Deutschland, July 20, 2009, p. 12
  5. ↑ Norbert Wehrstedt: Online tickets, totally digital and a new pigeon - Leipziger Dokwoche will show 346 films from 57 countries in five competitions from October 28 to November 3, retro, homages and special series , Leipziger Volksbühne, November 11, 2013, p 12
  6. ↑ Ralf Schenk: The ghosts of the past - A series of Defa documentaries in the Berlin cinema "Acud" , Berliner Zeitung, January 20, 2000, p. 14
  7. ↑ Ralf Schenk: Departure, Schnaps and Beautiful Women - About Peter Voigt's film “Twilight” and the East Berlin bohemians of the 1950s , Berliner Zeitung, May 8, 2014
  8. ↑ Hans-Jörg Rother: The survivors and the dead - East German documentary filmmakers discover what really socialist did not exist: the soul , FAZ, November 21, 1994, p. 38.

Web links

Commons : Peter Voigt  - collection of images, videos and audio files


personal data
SURNAME Voigt, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director of documentaries
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Dessau
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 2015
Place of death Berlin