Walter Beck (director)

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Walter Beck (born September 19, 1929 in Mannheim ) is a German director , screenwriter and actor who became famous for his children's films for DEFA and GDR television . He is also a theater director, reciter and former artistic director of festive events.

life and work

Walter Beck was born in Mannheim as the son of the electrical engineer Georg Friedrich Beck and the tailor Johanna Beck, but spent his childhood in Berlin, where his family moved in 1937. After graduating from high school, he studied directing at the DEFA junior studio from 1948 to 1951 and then worked as an assistant director in the area of dubbing and documentary film . In 1951/52 his assistant also led to the DEFA studio for feature films, where he supported director Otto Meyer with Schatten über den Insel and Richard Nicolas with Anna Susanna . From 1952 to 1954 he moved to the DEFA studio for newsreels and documentaries and assisted Herbert Ballmann at Blaue Wimpel im Sommerwind . His first own production came about in 1953 with the documentary Herren der Felder , when he switched back to DEFA's feature film division in 1954, where he met many well-known directors such as Hans Müller , Slatan Dudow , Artur Pohl , Richard Groschopp , Kurt Jung-Alsen and Martin Hellberg assisted.

In 1958 Beck became a permanent film director at the DEFA feature film studio in Potsdam-Babelsberg. His feature film debut Claudia from 1959, as well as the follow-up film Der neue Fimmel from 1959/1960, was made primarily for a younger audience, so that he quickly became a popular DEFA children's film director. Beck later staged a number of fairy tale adaptations that made him known beyond the borders of the GDR, such as 1965 Grimm's King Drosselbart with Manfred Krug in the lead role, Sleeping Beauty (1971), The Prince behind the Seven Seas (1982), The Bearskin (1986) and Frog King (1988). Besides Gunter Friedrich , Beck was also one of the central representatives of political children's films in the GDR, which depicted historical events and class struggles from the children's perspective. Set in the era of the Peasant Wars , the Mexican Revolution , the October Revolution , the Weimar Republic, and German Fascism , these films include When Martin Was 14 (1964), Käuzchenkuhle (1968), The Red Rider (1970), and The Executioner Brother (1979) and the film Trini (1976) based on a children's book by Ludwig Renn . In 1989/1990 he made his last film, The Dispute over the Donkey's Shadow , based on the novel Die Abderiten by Christoph Martin Wieland .

In addition to his children's films, he finished shooting the love film Drei Kapitel Glück with Gisela Büttner , Manfred Borges and Gerlind Ahnert in 1961 and in the early 1970s for the seven- parter Stülpner legend with Manfred Krug in the lead role, but the children's films made him particularly popular. In addition to film work, Beck also worked as a theater director at stages in Schwerin, Zwickau and Erfurt, but also as a reciter and from 1984 to 1989 as president of the national children's and youth film festival “ Goldener Spatz ” in Gera.

With the turnaround he stopped his artistic work, since from then on his work was no longer asked for. On the occasion of the director's 90th birthday, the band Mär and more appeared in the manuscript series of the DEFA Foundation . A working biography kaleidoscope by Walter Beck .

Awards

Filmography

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ DEFA Foundation: Mär und mehr - A kaleidoscope of work biography by Walter Beck. DEFA Foundation, accessed on August 20, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Beck, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director, screenwriter and actor
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim