Thomas Gaevert

Thomas Gaevert (born December 27, 1964 in Hasselfelde ) is a German journalist and freelance author .

Life

After leaving school, Thomas Gaevert trained as a typesetter from 1981 to 1983 with subsequent activity in this profession at the Volksstimme Magdeburg / Harz printing company in Wernigerode . From 1984 to 1988 he was also a vacationer supervisor at the FDGB holiday service Wernigerode , at the same time he did his basic military service with the NVA from 1986 to 1988 .

From 1988 to 1991 Gaevert studied cultural sciences at the University of Applied Sciences for Social-Cultural Work in Meißen / University of Education "Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander" in Dresden . He then worked for two years as a social worker for emigrants from what was then the Soviet Union in the district of Wernigerode . In 1993 he began studying at the Federal University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, specializing in social law, which he finished in 1996 without a degree. In 1997/1998 he took part in a further training course in film and media management at the mibeg - Institute for Professional Development, Cologne, and in 1998 he also had an internship at the KiKA of ARD and ZDF .

Gaevert has been working as an author and journalist since September 1998, mainly for radio and TV productions for SWR , WDR , RBB , MDR and ZDF . Especially on the radio , he very often makes use of the possibilities of docudrama and docufiction . Based on appropriate cinematic narrative forms, he combines documentary elements with radio play elements.

One of Gaevert's preferred topics is dealing with the GDR past. Another thematic focus is dealing with the problems and worlds of mentally handicapped people.

Works

Movie and TV

Gaeverts first turned in 2002 extended documentation The farce - History of arrest tells the story of the writer Elisabeth Graul, in 1951 as a member of a resistance group against the totalitarian communist regime in East Berlin fell behind bars. After her arrest, she had to spend 7 months in the notorious Stasi remand prison in Hohenschönhausen . In 1952 she was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a show trial by the Supreme Court of the GDR . The film was made as a free production and had its premiere on February 13, 2002 in the Palais am Fürstenwall in Magdeburg. The two actors Barbara Schnitzler and Peter Sodann could be won as speakers . The daily newspaper Volksstimme, published in Magdeburg , wrote on the occasion of the premiere: ... Thomas Gaevert's film refrains from any voyeurism '. He lets those affected talk about their pain, their ideals and hopes. He lets the faces speak. When the charismatic voices of Barbara Schnitzler or Peter Sodann are present in the roles of interrogator or judge Hilde Benjamin , the documentary experiences a further sensitive artistic condensation. Many guests asked that evening when the film would be made available to a larger audience on MDR television. There was no answer because there was no representative of the MDR in the Palais am Fürstenwall.

The TV documentary Frauen als Beute , produced for ARD in 2005, deals with the history of the Wehrmacht brothels in World War II . Gaevert researched for about two years in Eastern European archives. The film shows how women in occupied Eastern Europe in particular were driven into organized forced prostitution by the German medical service of the Wehrmacht . After its first broadcast on German television , the film was shown several times in Poland , Estonia and Australia .

In 2007, the documentary film Erased followed , which is dedicated to the downfall of Jewish life in the Polish city of Białystok during the Second World War.

In 2011 Gaevert worked on the reconstruction of the original Polizeiruf-110 film Im Alter von ... on the basis of the material already provided by the DRA Babelsberg for the radio feature and the script transcript (see below) . The basis for this was u. a. the personal recommendation by Dr. Peter-Paul Schneider (DRA) as well as the preparatory work by Gerhard Gehle (chronological sorting of scenes of the approx. Seven-hour recording material, creation of a first rough cut - since then also in the DRA inventory). On June 23, 2011, Im Alter von ... had its late broadcast premiere. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the series Polizeiruf 110, the MDR showed the film together with the documentary 40 Jahre Polizeiruf , in which Gaevert was again involved as an author. With an audience rate of 26.3 percent in the MDR broadcasting area and 6.3 percent nationwide, the MDR achieved one of its greatest audience successes.

From 2014 to 2015 Gaevert worked as an author on the ZDF documentary Deadly Frontier - The shooter and his victim . It tells the story of two 15-year-old schoolchildren from Halle who wanted to flee across the inner-German border at Sorge in the Harz Mountains on December 8, 1979 . Heiko Runge, one of the two boys, died from a shot in the back. The film, staged by director Volker Schmidt-Sondermann, combines interviews with contemporary witnesses, documentary and feature film scenes that were shot on the former inner-German border near Sorge in the Harz Mountains.

broadcast

The radio documentary Rather It Rains Ink ... broadcast in 2010 tells the story of a prohibited film project from the GDR TV series " Polizeiruf 110 ". The film Im Alter von ..., made by Heinz Seibert in 1974 (scheduled broadcast date: February 23, 1975) was based in its original script version Am hellerlichten Tag by Dorothea Kleine on the case of the child murderer Erwin Hagedorn , who in 1969 and 1971 in a cruel manner had killed three boys from Eberswalde . Hagedorn was sentenced to death for this and executed in 1972. Although the alienated film story did not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the real events, the film was banned before its planned broadcast and should be destroyed. After the silent camera negative of the film was secured in the German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) Potsdam-Babelsberg in spring 2009 , Gaevert met with the scriptwriter Dorothea Kleine, who made a copy of the long-lost screenplay available to him, which - due to poor copy quality initially completely reconstructed and saved as a true-to-original copy - was taken over into the inventory of the DRA Babelsberg. Since the original sound of the material shot in 1974 was actually destroyed, the film had to be completely re-dubbed by MDR in 2011 with current actors. From the beginning, the project was led by Dr. Peter-Paul Schneider, the head of the DRA Babelsberg location at the time.

The 2011 feature produced by SWR Some Mike Oldfield recently tells the story of Rammstein singer Till Lindemann and his father, the writer Werner Lindemann .

Gaevert worked with the Wernigerode author and journalist Söhnke Streckel for the documentaries License for Spying (2011) and Lange Schatten (2012) as well as Spying Friends (2014).

Filmography

• 1997: Edgar (short film, 2 min.) - details
• 1997: Daniels Song (short film, 5 min.) - details
• 1997: Daniels Live (short film, 7 min.) - details
• 1998: A day with Kevin, Krishan and Jelte - visit to an integration class (TV report, children's channel, 6 min.) - details
• 2001: The Farce - the story of an arrest (documentary film, production Schiwago-Film in cooperation with Landesheimatbund Sachsen-Anhalt e.V., Harz University / Department of Media Informatics, Literature Office Saxony-Anhalt, State Center for Political Education and Lotto-Toto GmbH Saxony-Anhalt , 30 min.) - details
• 2005: Women as Prey - Wehrmacht and Prostitution (TV documentary, ARD, 43 min.) - Details
• 2007: Erased - Bialystok and its Jews (TV documentary, DasErste, 45 min.) - details
• 2008: Sabine's new world (TV magazine article, MDR Here from four , 4 min.) - Details
• 2010: Nah dran: shock therapy (TV documentary, MDR Nah dran - the magazine for life issues , 6 min.) - details
• 2011: 40 years of police call - a success story (TV documentary, MDR, 45 min.) - details
• 2011: Police call 110 : At the age of ... (TV film, participation in reproduction) - details
• 2015: Deadly Frontier - The shooter and his victim (TV documentary, ZDFZeit, 45 min.) - Details
• 2019: Our Germany (three-part TV documentary together with Christian Heynen and Ingo Helm, DasErste, 130 min. In total) - details

Radio

• 1998: From Caven via Berlin to Tir Ná Nóg (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 25 minutes) - details
• 1999: ... everyone can make music - The ingenious dilettantes from Alsterdorf (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 57 min.) - details
• 1999: I'm on fire and I will always be on fire! - Elisabeth Graul and the GDR past (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 35 min.) - details
• 2000: Now Charlie - you sing it! - German Propaganda Swing in Großdeutschen Rundfunk (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - Details
• 2000: Blumenau (author's production, SWR2 jungle, 5 min.) - details
• 2000: Wolf Mittler - A radio reporter between the fronts (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - details
• 2000: Von Digedags and Abrafaxen - comic heroes in the GDR (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - details
• 2000: Between two cultures - Young Mennonites from the former USSR in Germany (documentary, WDR editorial team Diesseits von Eden, 25 min.) - Details
• 2001: Organ to the power of two / ASLSP (author's production, SWR2 jungle, 5 min.) - details
• 2001: Between Church and Social Welfare Center - Young Mennonites in Germany (documentary, Bayern2Radio- history and stories, 25 min.) - details
• 2001: The little girl and the big hero - From the correspondence between Marie Hannes and Karl May (documentary, Bayern2Radio- history and stories, 25 min.) - details
• 2001: Expensive, magnificent Old Shatterhand - Marie Hannes and Karl May (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - details
• 2002: Research Cosmonaut and Citizen of the GDR - The Mission of Sigmund Jähn (Documentary, SWR2 Jungle, 30 min.) - Details
• 2002: Science fiction in the GDR (author's production, SWR2 jungle, 6 min.) - details
• 2002: Confidential classified information : IM Punk (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - details
• 2002: The earth is turning left! - Science fiction in the GDR (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - details
• 2003: Your lies didn't die ... - Niklas Frank's accounting (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - Details
• 2003: Your show, young people! - The story of Radio DT64 (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - Details
• 2003: Radioday October 4, 1993 - Assault on the White House in Moscow (documentary, SWR2 Jungle, 30 min.) - Details
• 2003: Ritter Runkel rides again (author's production, SWR2 jungle, 5 min.) - details
• 2004: In the foreign homeland - history and visions of Hermann Blumenau (documentary, SWR jungle, 26 min.) - details
• 2005: I couldn't figure it out - report from the world of autism (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 25 min.) - details
• 2005: The language of the NVA (magazine article, SWR2 jungle, 5 min.) - details
• 2006: We are the soldiers of the workers' power - On everyday life in the NVA (documentary, SWR jungle, 30 min.) - Details
• 2006: Crooked thoughts of martyrs, people and ants - The fantastic worlds of Kurd Laßwitz (documentary, SWR2, 30 min.) - details
• 2006: James Bond made in GDR? - Socialist television heroes on the invisible front of peace (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 33 min.) - Details
• 2007: The film is nihilistic , Miss Butterfly - Story of a Prohibition (Documentary, SWR2 Jungle, 30 min.) - Details
• 2007: I didn't want to be a traitor - The Paul Merker case and the SED (documentary, SWR2, 49 min.) - Details
• 2007: Scout on behalf of socialism - The story of Gabriele Gast (documentary, SWR2 Jungle, 25 min.) - Details
• 2008: nothing happened? - Halberstadt and its neo-Nazis (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - details
• 2009: Education for a socialist personality - children's homes in the GDR (documentary, SWR2, 55 min.) - details
• 2009: The story of Laila and Slow Joe - Searching for luck with the treasure chest (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 25 min.) - Details
• 2009: Voices of Love - The Story of Kerstin Blasczyk (Documentary, SWR2 Jungle, 20 Min.) - Details
• 2009: Why didn't Sarah tell anything? - Crossing borders in residential groups for the disabled (documentary, SWR2 Jungle, 25 min.) - Details
• 2009: Ways to Oz (documentary, SWR2 - feature on Sunday, 55 min.) - details
• 2009: Does anyone feel a killer instinct here? - Paintball in self-experiment (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 25 min.) - Details
• 2009: How can you live with this past? - RAF exits in the GDR (documentary, SWR2 feature, 55 min.) - Details
• 2009: Sabine's new world - a 38-year-old autistic woman leaves her parents' home (documentary, SWR2 life, 25 min.) - details
• 2010: Otze - About the life and death of a German punk idol (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - details
• 2010: It's more like raining ink… - The Hagedorn murder and a prohibited film (documentary, SWR2 feature, 55 min.) - Details
• 2011: Will the little one be taken away from me again? - Mentally disabled parents and their children (documentary, SWR2 life, 25 min.) - Details
• 2011: Gloriously immortal - Of old and new vampire stories (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - Details
• 2011: Something Mike Oldfield recently - A father-son story (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 30 min.) - details
• 2011: License to espionage - Military liaison missions in the Cold War (documentary, SWR2 feature, 55 min.) - Details
• 2012: The Roland and the Urstromtaler - Out and about with a regional currency (documentary, SWR2 tandem, 25 min.) - Details
• 2012: just get away! - Street children in Germany (documentary, SWR2 tandem, 25 min.) - Details
• 2012: The time traveler from Ansbach - or Who was Oswald Levett ? (Documentary, SWR2 Tandem, 30 min.) - Details
• 2012: Her second life - Kerstin Kuzia advises former GDR children in care (documentary, SWR2 jungle, 25 min.) - details
• 2012: Long shadows - GDR border guards , the "Runge murder case" and a trial (documentary, SWR2 feature, 55 min.) Details
• 2013: Grandfather's memory - Judka Strittmatter and her personal search for traces (documentary, SWR2 tandem, 25 min.) - details
• 2013: regional money as an alternative to the euro? (Magazine article, WDR5 morning echo, 3:10 min.) - Details
• 2013: Survival under the swastika - The story of the Klimt family (documentary, SWR2 tandem, 25 min.) - Details
• 2013: The Bischofferode case - How the Treuhandanstalt handled the East German potash industry (documentary, SWR2 feature, 55 min.) - Details
• 2014: Once to Mars and not back again - A man and his dream (Feature, SWR2 Tandem, 25 min.) - Details
• 2014: Fight for Peace in Kabul - The story of the boxer Hamid Rahimi (Feature, SWR2 Tandem, 25 min.) - Details
• 2014: From old slogans to new freedoms - The last teenagers of the GDR (feature, SWR2 tandem, 25 min.) - - Details
• 2014: Spy friends - Germany and the American secret service NSA (documentary, SWR2 feature, 55 min.) - details
• 2014: Born 1914 - Insights from a Centenarian (Feature, SWR2 Tandem, 25 Min.) - Details
• 2015: who are the people? - About xenophobia in the east (The ARD radio feature , 23 September 2015 and other broadcast dates, 55 min.) - Details
• 2015: I don't know where it comes from - living with PWS syndrome (report, SWR2 Tandem, November 18, 2015, 25 min.) - details
• 2015: About Brockenbenno and lost time - story of an extreme hiker (report, SWR2 Tandem, December 2, 2015, 25 min.) - details
• 2016: Little White Dove of Peace - A GDR children's song and its creator, (Feature, SWR2 Tandem, March 9, 2016, 25 min.) - Details
• 2016: Kazakhstan, that was once upon a time - How the Briandin family found a second home in Germany (Feature, SWR 2 Tandem, June 29, 2016, 25 min.) - Details
• 2017: The air pirates of Marienbad - story of an airplane hijacking (documentary, SWR2 feature, February 1, 2017, 55 min.) - details
• 2017: On the big stage - How Slow Joe came from Buxtehude to South Korea (Feature, SWR2 Tandem, March 13, 2017, 25 min.) - Details
• 2017: With your own flying machine to freedom - forty years after a failed attempt to escape from the GDR (Feature, SWR2 Tandem, May 15, 2017, 25 min.) - Details
• 2017: An uncomfortable archivist - Sabine Lange and the Stasi informers in the Neubrandenburg Literature Center (Feature, SWR2 Tandem, October 30, 2017, 25 min.) - Details
• 2018: Die Supergeheimen - The GDR Military Intelligence Service (Documentary, SWR2 Feature, January 10, 2018, 55 min.) - Details
• 2018: In search of the world of tomorrow - A fantastic library (Feature, SWR2 Leben, September 21, 2018, 25 min.) - Details
• 2019: The weather observer - A life on the Brocken (Feature, SWR2 Leben, January 4, 2019, 25 min.) - Details
• 2019: The Generational Project - Uranium Mining in East Germany and its Consequences (Documentary, SWR2 Feature, February 27, 2019, 55 min.) - Details
• 2019: Germany is a white flowered dress - Why the Vietnamese Huong Trute came and stayed in the GDR over 40 years ago (Feature, SWR2 Leben, March 6, 2019, 25 min.) - Details
• 2019: Agent out of a thirst for adventure - A young student and the GDR's military intelligence service (Feature, SWR2 Leben, July 5, 2019, 25 min.) - Details
• 2019: The house has yellow windows - A horror fiction (radio play together with Maidon Bader, author's production, published: August 1, 2019; as a CD on June 1, 2020 by Nowa MD, 55 min.) - Details
• 2019: Cold War on the radio - propaganda battles in post-war Germany (documentary, SWR2 feature, October 30, 2019, 56 min.) - details
• 2020: Lonely Death - Personal search for traces of a lost friend (Feature, SWR2 Leben, June 24, 2020, 25 min.) - Details

Print media

• They always called me a doll - a collage in text and pictures from the life of an autistic woman and her siblings (Menschen - Das Magazin, issue 2/2006)
• 40 years Polizeiruf 110 - an interesting journey through time (article for the ARD press issue 40 years Polizeiruf 110 , issue 5/2011)
• DT64 - The youth radio from the East 1964-1991 . State Center for Political Education Thuringia and the Federal Foundation for the Processing of the SED Dictatorship, Erfurt 2018, ISBN 978-3-946939-29-0 .

Awards

The radio piece, Your Lies Don't Die, produced by SWR in 2003 (director: Hans-Peter Bögel) was nominated as an ARD contribution for the Prix ​​Europa 2004. In the competition it was voted 6th of the 10 best European productions in the radio feature category.

Web links

• Thomas Gaevert in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Website by Thomas Gaevert

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , February 15, 2002: Shadows of the grid
2. ↑ Magdeburger Volksstimme , February 15, 2002: Well Graulchen, what about the truth?
3. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 12, 2005: Abducted Lives - "Women as Prey" - a documentary about the brothels of the Wehrmacht
4. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 12, 2005: You never had a chance - The fate of the forced prostitutes in the Wehrmacht brothels: "Women as prey" (ARD)
5. ^ German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) Potsdam-Babelsberg, film inventory of GDR television / German television broadcasting
6. ↑ MDR : Dream quota for forbidden "Police Call 110" from 1974
7. ^ Magdeburger Volksstimme , September 27, 2014: Deadly border filmed in worry
8. ↑ Magdeburger Volksstimme , July 17, 2015: ZDF documentary "Deadly Frontier" - Uwe Fleischhauer: "It was all so pointless"
9. ^ German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) Potsdam-Babelsberg, film inventory of GDR television / German television broadcasting
10. ^ German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) Potsdam-Babelsberg, records inventory of GDR television / German television broadcasting
11. ↑ As a bonus material (slightly abridged) in Polizeiruf 110 - DVD Box 9 contain
12. ↑ Official press kit of the ZDF
13. ↑ See also: Hoheneck (prison) and Hohenschönhausen memorial
14. ^ Official homepage of the Rammstein group
15. ^ Downfall of the Bischofferode potash works
16. ↑ MDR , February 13, 2013, 10:35 p.m .: Shift in the shaft - Bischofferode 20 years later
17. ^ Official homepage of Mars One
18. ↑ Official homepage of Benno Schmidt (Brocken-Benno)