Walter Reimann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter Reimann (born June 2, 1887 in Berlin ; † November 8, 1936 there ) was a German painter , film architect and screenwriter .

Life

Reimann was "one of the leading interior designers of the domestic silent film and co-founder of cinematic expressionism". He began his artistic career when he was not quite 15 in March 1902 with an apprenticeship as a decorative painter. On the side he attended the teaching establishment of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin from 1902 to 1906, then (until 1914) Reimann worked as a set designer. Another field of activity Reimann was painting; here he specialized in portrait and landscape painting. For a while, from 1912 to 1914, he worked as a set designer at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, but also as an outfitter at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg and as an illustrator for the daily press. From 1914 to 1916 Walter Reimann served as a soldier in the First World War. Shortly before the end of the war in 1918, Reimann worked for a few months as a theater painter at the Front Theater in Vilnius, now Vilnius in Lithuania.

As a member of the expressionist artist publication Der Sturm , Walter Reimann felt committed to new, avant-garde paths in art at an early stage. In the spring of 1919 Reimann was won over to the cinema by the film architect Hermann Warm , whom he had met in Wilna. As one of three production designers (as Warm's partner, with Walter Röhrig as executive architect), Reimann designed the decorations for the expressionist masterpiece Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari and also designed the costumes for the actors. Subsequently, the Berliner rarely took part in outstanding films, at best his buildings for Berthold Viertel's experimental work The Adventures of a Ten-Mark Note and Henrik Galeen's Mandrake remake deserve attention.

In 1928 Walter Reimann was brought to Hollywood by Ernst Lubitsch to design the buildings and costumes for the alpine drama The King of Bernina . Since the dawn of the sound film age, Reimann's cinematic significance had been on a steep decline. Apart from a few more elaborate films ( Rasputin , Theodor Körner , Unheimliche Geschichte ), he hardly received any worthwhile commissions. In 1933, Reimann created the film sets for Thea von Harbou's only productions, Elisabeth and the Fool and Hanneles Himmelfahrt , and Reimann also wrote the screenplay for the first film mentioned.

In 2017, the American Art Directors Guild , the professional representative of American film architects, honored the scene-setting achievements of their German colleagues with a special event at Grauman's Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Walter Reimann's artistic estate is in the German Film Museum in Frankfurt am Main.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Hans-Peter Reichmann (Ed.): Walter Reimann. Painter and film architect (= cinematograph. Vol. 11). German Film Museum, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-88799-055-2 .
  • Alfons Maria Arns: From Holstenwall to Stedingsehre. Walter Reimann, German Film and National Socialism. In: Walter Reimann - painter and film architect, Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Filmmuseum 1997, ISBN 3-88799-055-2 , pp. 144-165 (cinematograph, no. 11).
  • Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 6: N - R. Mary Nolan - Meg Ryan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 453.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The large personal dictionary of films, Volume 6, p. 453
  2. ^ Announcement in Variety

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Reimann, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, film architect and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1936
Place of death Berlin