Richard Cohn-Vossen

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David Hans Richard Cohn-Vossen (born September 30, 1934 in Zurich ) is a German director and screenwriter .

Life

Born in Zurich and in the Soviet Union grew up the son of German emigrants Stefan Cohn-Vossen worked as a writer and director in the DEFA - Documentary Film Studio . He lived first in Leningrad and Moscow . At the beginning of the war in 1941 he was born with his mother, the doctor Elfriede Cohn-Vossen. Ranft († 1957) evacuated to the Abkhazian mountain village of Pschu in the Caucasus . His stepfather Alfred Kurella , who had stayed in Moscow during the war, also lived there from 1946 . In the USSR, he first studied physics. After his mother's death, he moved to his stepfather in Leipzig, gave up physics, first worked as an interpreter for DEFA and then assistant to filmmakers Andrew Thorndike and Karl Gass , before making his own films from 1966, such as portraits of celebrities, but also from industrial workers or LPG farmers.

His activity in eastern Germany ended when Cohn-Vossen signed the resolution by Stephan Hermlin against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann , published on November 17, 1976 by twelve well-known GDR writers . Since he did not give in to the request to withdraw his signature, his film Workers' Family in Ilmenau , which he had just edited, was not released for screening. Other of his films were no longer allowed to run in the cinemas. Thereupon Cohn-Vossen applied for an exit visa and moved to the Federal Republic in 1979.

From then on he worked for the North German Broadcasting Corporation . He no longer produced movies.

Heinz Müller produced a modified version of the forbidden documentary Workers' Family in Ilmenau , which raised the question of the alienation of work through modern technology, under the name Porzelliner , which was officially approved in the cinemas. Cohn-Vossen smuggled the rough cut version of the working-class family in Ilmenau into Germany so that the DEFA Foundation was able to restore the copy of the film in 2011. This version was shown for the first time on September 5, 2011 in the Arsenal cinema in Berlin .

Filmography

  • 1959–1963: The Russian Miracle (2 parts; direction, screenplay)
  • 1966: The Ballad of the Green Berets I (Director)
  • 1966: Robert Jackson Sues II (Director)
  • 1966/1967: Paul Dessau (director, screenplay)
  • 1968: Five chapters about Werner Conrad - farmer in the Neuholland cooperation group, an hour's drive from Berlin - and his dream of water (director, screenplay)
  • 1968: Tales from the New World (Director)
  • 1970: ... so that it continues (director)
  • 1970: Day of the Animals (director, screenplay, music adaptation)
  • 1970: Mathematician (director; text author: Wolfgang Thierse )
  • 1971/1972: attempt on Schober (direction, screenplay)
  • 1972: In the matter of H. and eight others (director, screenplay)
  • 1973: Turek tells (director, screenplay)
  • 1974: Night worker - Berlin, autumn 73 (director, screenplay)
  • 1974: companions - encounters in the 25th year of the GDR (director)
  • 1975: Monika (director, screenplay)
  • 1975: Thoughts on the Quadriennale (direction, screenplay, speaker)
  • 1976: Member of Parliament in Rostock - in advance (director, screenplay, speaker)
  • 1977: Working-class family in Ilmenau (director; the film was only shown in a restored version in 2011)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ At that time: Alfred Kurella, Elfriede Cohn-Vossen: The dream of Ps'chu. A marriage correspondence in World War II , ed. from the Academy of Arts of the GDR , Aufbau-Verlag Berlin, 1984.
  2. ↑ Jegor Jublimov, Krahl, Knaup, Steiner, Cohn-Vossen, in: Junge Welt, October 2, 2019.
  3. ^ DEFA Foundation: DEFA film series in the Arsenal cinema. Films by Richard Cohn-Vossen.
personal data
SURNAME Cohn-Vossen, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cohn-Vossen, David Hans Richard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich