Robert Wiene

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Robert Wiene (born April 27, 1873 in Breslau , † July 17, 1938 in Paris ) was a German film director . His expressionist silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , who is considered a milestone in film history.

Life

Wiene was the son of Pauline Loevy and the later royal Saxon court actor Karl Wiene (1852-1913). His younger brother Konrad Wiene also became a theater actor and film director. After studying law, mainly in Vienna , from 1894 , Robert Wiene took over the management of two small theaters in 1908 and 1909, before turning to the new medium of film, initially as a screenwriter. From the beginning he was a board member of the Filmbund , founded in 1922 , an interest group for Austrian filmmakers.

Robert Wiene is best known as the director of the expressionist classic Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1919), although his specific contribution to the film remains controversial to this day. He then shot Genuine (1920) with expressionist décor and above all the remarkable Dostoevsky adaptation Raskolnikow (1923). After Orlac's hands (1924) with Conrad Veidt , the last film of caligarism, he only made second-rate films. In addition to numerous light entertainment films, his name also stands for a film adaptation of the Richard Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier (1926) in collaboration with the composer and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal .

After the National Socialists came to power, Robert Wiene had to emigrate in 1934 and ended up in Paris after stops in Budapest and London . The attempt to re-produce the Caligari material as a sound film together with Jean Cocteau failed. Robert Wiene died in Paris on July 17, 1938 , towards the end of the shooting of the time drama Ultimatum .

Filmography

Only around 20 films of over 90 that Robert Wiene worked on still exist today:

literature

  • Uli Jung, Walter Schatzberg: Robert Wiene. The Caligari director. Henschel, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-89487-233-0 .
  • The cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Screenplay by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz for Robert Wiene's film from 1919/20. With an introductory essay by Siegbert S. Prawer and materials for the film by Uli Jung and Walter Schatzberg. edition text + kritik, Munich 1995 (FILMtext - scripts of classic German films, edited by Helga Belach and Hans-Michael Bock), 158 pp. ISBN 3-88377-484-7 .
  • Izabela Taraszczuk: Expressionism in German Film: Robert Wienes “Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari ”- vision of a totalitarian state or hallucinations of a mentally ill person? In: Augustyn Mańczyk, Paweł Zimniak (eds.): Germanistyka. Volume 15, Studia i materiały L. Zielona Góra: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej 2000, pp. 211-216, ISBN 83-7268-015-9 .
  • Kay Less : 'In life, more is taken from you than given ...'. Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. P. 535 ff., ACABUS-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Uli Jung, Walter Schatzberg: Beyond Caligari - The Films of Robert Wiene. Berghahn Books, p. Vi.
personal data
SURNAME Wiene, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1938
Place of death Paris