Thomas Elsaesser

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Thomas Elsaesser (2017)

Thomas Elsaesser (born June 22, 1943 in Berlin-Charlottenburg ; † December 4, 2019 in Beijing ) was a German film scholar , director and professor of film and television studies at the University of Amsterdam . He was the grandson of the architect Martin Elsaesser and the brother of Regine Elsässer . Elsaesser was an important representative of international film studies, whose books and essays on film theory, genre theory, Hollywood, film history, media archeology and new media, European auteur cinema and installation art have appeared in more than 20 languages. He was also the director and screenwriter of the film Die Sonneninsel (2017) about an ecological experiment by the garden architect Leberecht Migge .

Life

Thomas Elsaesser was born in Berlin in 1943. He spent his childhood in Upper Franconia , but moved with his family to Mannheim in 1951 , where he attended a modern language grammar school from 1955 to 1962 and then studied English and German at the Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg . In 1963 Elsaesser moved to Great Britain , studied English literature at the University of Sussex (1963–1966) and spent a year at the Sorbonne in Paris (1967/68). In 1971 he received his doctorate in Comparative Literature at the University of Sussex with a thesis on the historians of the French Revolution Jules Michelet and Thomas Carlyle .

In 1968 he began at the University of Sussex to publish a film magazine (Brighton Film Review) , which he continued from 1971 under the name Monogram in London and which made him internationally known as a critic and theoretician of classic Hollywood cinema and especially melodrama .

From 1972 to 1976 he taught English and French literature at the University of East Anglia . In 1976 he founded one of the first independent institutes for film studies (Film Studies Department) in Great Britain together with Charles Barr . In addition to seminars on early cinema, Hitchcock and Fritz Lang , Elsaesser also initiated a course on cinema in the Weimar Republic , which he taught together with his colleague WG Sebald .

In 1991 he received a call to the University of Amsterdam . There he founded the Department for Film and Television Studies, which he headed until 2000. In 1992 he initiated an international Masters and PhD program, a book series ( Film Culture in Transition , published by Amsterdam University Press / Chicago University Press) and was co-founder of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), a graduate humanities school based on the American model .

Since 1976 Elsaesser has taught regularly as visiting professor at US universities such as the University of Iowa, University of California (Los Angeles, San Diego, Berkeley, Irvine, Santa Barbara), New York University. From 1993 to 1999 he was Professor II at the University of Bergen , Norway and from 2005 to 2006 he held the “Ingmar Bergman” chair at the University of Stockholm .

In 2006/2007 he was Leverhulme Professor at the University of Cambridge . He has also taught several times as a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg , the Free University of Berlin and the University of Vienna . In 2003 he was a fellow at the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies Vienna, in 2004 a fellow at the Sackler Institute of Tel Aviv University and in 2007 an “Overseas Fellow” at Churchill College, Cambridge. Since 2005 Elsaesser has also taught one semester at Yale University as a visiting professor every year.

From 2000 to 2005 he headed an international research project on "Cinema Europe" in Amsterdam , which resulted in several book publications on European film, such as studies on the relationship between Europe and Hollywood (European Cinema - Face to Face with Hollywood) , on Cinephilia ( Cinephilia - Movies, Love and Memory) , on the European film avant-garde (Moving Forward Looking Back) , Lars von Trier (Playing the Waves) and the European film festivals (Film Festivals - From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia) .

Elsaesser became known in Germany primarily through his studies of almost all epochs of German film history, from early film ( film history and early cinema: archeology of media change ; cinema of the imperial era ), the film of the Weimar Republic (the Weimar cinema: enlightened and ambiguous) and Fritz Lang (Metroplis) to the New German Film; as well as a monograph on Rainer Werner Fassbinder , a study on the afterlife of the time of National Socialism in German film and an anthology on Harun Farocki .

Together with his sister Regine Elsässer , he founded the Martin Elsaesser Foundation in March 2009 , which is dedicated to the life and work of the architect Martin Elsaesser , and prepared an exhibition about him. Thomas Elsaesser was chairman of the foundation.

Under the title The sunny island one is in 2017 under the direction of Thomas Elsaesser documentary appeared, which mainly based on amateur footage of his father, the latter has turned from 1933 to 1950 with his Kodak double-8, the interconnections of grandparents with the landscape architect Leberecht Migge researched and examined the connections between the family history and the island of Dommelwall near Berlin.

Thomas Elsaesser died at the beginning of December 2019 at the age of 76 in Beijing, where he was visiting professor.

Awards

In 1990 Elsaesser received both the Jay Leyda Prize ( New York University ) and the Nancy Kovacs Singer Prize (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) for his book on New German Cinema . His Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary again received the Nancy Kovacs Singer Prize as best film book of 1998.

In 2006 Elsaesser was awarded the Royal Order of the Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw . In 2008 the Society for Film and Media Studies in Philadelphia honored him with a "Life Membership".

In 2007 the University of Udine (Italy) awarded his book European Cinema Face to Face with Hollywood the Premio Limina-Carnica , which is awarded annually to the best international film book.

On Elsaesser's 60th birthday, German colleagues published the commemorative publication The Trace Through the Mirror . Another commemorative was published on his 65th birthday: Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser . Also in 2008 he was elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy .

Fonts (in German)

  • Hollywood today. History, Gender and Nation in Post-Classical Cinema. Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86505-301-5
  • Terror and trauma. On the violence of the past in the FRG. Kadmos, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-931659-83-6 .
  • Weimar cinema - enlightened and ambiguous. Vorwerk 8, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-930916-24-X .
  • The New German Film. Heyne, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-453-08123-4 .
  • Metropolis. The classic film by Fritz Lang. Europa, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-203-84118-5
  • Film history and early cinema. Archeology of a Media Change. Edition text and criticism, München 2002, ISBN 3-88377-696-3 .
  • Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Bertz and Fischer, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-929470-79-9 .
  • with Malte Hagener: Introduction to film theory. Junius, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 3-88506-621-1 .
  • with Michael Wedel: Body, Death and Technology: Metamorphoses of the War Film . Wallstein 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-9028-7
  • "Like a lofty master in Adam's costume": the late Migge and the beginnings of the "sunny island" . In: Die Gartenkunst 31 (2/2019), pp. 315–326.

literature

  • Jaap Kooijman, Patricia Pisters, Wanda Strauven (Eds.): Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser. Amsterdam University Press 2008, ISBN 90-8964-025-8 .
  • Malte Hagener , Johannes N. Schmidt, Michael Wedel (eds.): The trace through the mirror. The film in the culture of modernity. Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-86505-155-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Vinzenz Hediger: On the death of Thomas Elsaesser: history and theory under their own direction . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed December 5, 2019]).
  2. ↑ News - Martin Elsässer Foundation. In: martin-elsaesser-stiftung.de. April 16, 2018, accessed June 24, 2018 .
  3. ^ Matthias Alexander: Agreement with Elsaesser heirs. In: FAZ.net . Retrieved June 24, 2018 .
  4. ↑ The Sun Island (2017). In: imdb.com. October 20, 2017, accessed June 24, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Manuel Wischnewski: Documentary: Dommelwall Island - A Refuge in the Nazi Era . In: Berliner Zeitung . ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed on May 25, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Koninklijke onderscheidingen voor UvA-hoogleraren Elsaesser, Koomen en De Swaan - Actueel - Universiteit van Amsterdam. February 18, 2012, accessed February 6, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Koninklijke onderscheidingen voor UvA-hoogleraren Elsaesser, Koomen en De Swaan. September 4, 2006, accessed February 6, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Malte Hagener, Johannes N. Schmidt , Michael Wedel (eds.): The trace through the mirror . Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-86505-155-4 .
  9. ^ Jaap Kooijman, Patricia Pisters, Wanda Strauven (eds.): Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser . Amsterdam University Press, 2008, ISBN 90-8964-025-8 .
  10. ^ Professor Thomas Elsaesser. Retrieved February 6, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from December 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / osiris22.pi-consult.de
  12. ↑ Ralf Georg Czapla: Mixture of Wagner and Krupp - Thomas Elsaesser on the media event of 1927: Fritz Lang's monumental film “Metropolis”. In: literaturkritik.de. Retrieved June 24, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Thomas Elsaesser, Michael Wedel: Body, Death and Technology - Wallstein Verlag. Retrieved February 6, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Review by Rasmus Greiner. Retrieved February 6, 2019 .
  15. ^ Review by KD Feldmann. (PDF) Retrieved February 6, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Jan Süselbeck: Smells Like Victory? Retrieved February 6, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Elsaesser, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film scholar
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 2019
Place of death Beijing