Robert Müller (film distributor)

Robert Müller (born June 27, 1877 in Mödling , Austria-Hungary ; † April or May 1942 in Wlodawa or in the Sobibor extermination camp , Generalgouvernement Poland ) was an Austrian film manager, film distributor and film producer .

Life

Müller received a commercial apprenticeship before joining Pathé in 1903 . For this French film production company, he subsequently set up branches in Vienna and Prague . Later he was entrusted with the construction of cinemas in the Austro- Hungarian province, including Graz , Innsbruck , Fiume , Krakow , Pilsen , Trieste and Lemberg . In 1905 he represented the Pathé in Romania , Greece and the Orient . Shortly before the First World War , he was appointed director of the Pathé branch in Vienna.

During the war, Müller concentrated on film distribution with his own company and founded Kino-Film-Industrie GmbH in 1915, of which he was director until 1919. At the same time he produced several films with Robert-Müller-Film. After the end of the war (1918), Müller took part in other company foundations: Österreichische Industrie-Film (1919), Nationalfilm (1920), which presumably included the Kinegraphia atelier at Blücherstraße 12 in Berlin. In the period that followed, Müller appeared primarily with several central functionaries in the Austrian film industry; As a board member of Sascha Film , he was mainly responsible for the distribution business.

With the dawn of the sound film era, the film manager founded the “Lustspielverlag Robert Müller, Sound Film Distribution, Distribution and Sales”, and a little later he also produced a few sound films. With his colleague Ernst Franzos , he founded the production company “Favorit Film GmbH” in 1936, with which both men only made one film, Hannerl and her lovers . Until 1938 Müller was also Vice President of the Federation of Film Industries in Austria, representative of the film distributors in the film advisory board of the Austrian Ministry of Trade and Transport and a court-sworn expert in film matters.

The annexation of Austria ended the professional career of the Jew Müller. At the end of April 1942 he was deported from Vienna to the Wlodawa ghetto in eastern Poland. Robert Müller died a violent death there or in the Sobibor extermination camp in the four weeks that followed.

Filmography

as a producer

• 1914: The new triumvirate
• 1915: The war sponsor child
• 1915: The Moore Legacy
• 1916: He wants to make a joke
• 1916: evening sun
• 1917: The happiness of the beautiful crescent
• 1917: When the woman can't cook
• 1918: Paulchen Semmelmann's flailing years (probably)
• 1918: who does the child belong to?
• 1928: Service man No. 13
• 1931: Viennese magic sounds
• 1932: Salzburg, the soul paradise of Austria (short documentary film)
• 1932: Kraxenkirtag in Gaaden (short documentary film)
• 1936: Hannerl and her lovers

literature

• Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 257.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kinegraphia at cinegraph.de