Walter Schulze-Mittendorff

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Walter Schulze-Mittendorff (born January 31, 1893 in Berlin ; † August 14, 1976 there ) was a German sculptor , special effects artist and costume designer .

Live and act

Schulze-Mittendorff, who had started an apprenticeship as a sculptor with Otto Rossius at the age of 14, received his artistic training at the arts and crafts school in Berlin. In addition, he received further training at the Berlin Academy of the Arts and at the master's studio in the German capital. All in all, he had four years of practical training as a sculptor.

After his military service 1915–1918, Walter Schulze-Mittendorff began to make a name for himself as a sculptor, before he came to film in 1920 through a friend, the film architect Robert Herlth . He made his first tentative, initially insignificant contributions to the cinema for some top productions by Fritz Lang , including Der müde Tod . He designed z. B. the machines (including the robot depicted by Brigitte Helm ) for Metropolis and the masks for The Testament of Dr. Mabuse . In 1923 he created the sculptures for Arthur von Gerlach's literary film adaptation of the Chronicle of Grieshuus .

In 1935 he was one of three costumers (the other two were the experienced stage and film architect Rochus Gliese and Manon Hahn , another costume debutante). In 1937 he designed some sculptures for the Kleist adaptation The Broken Jug . His work as a costume designer for the production company Terra Film ended his freelance phase in March 1940. Schulze-Mittendorff's designs in the end times of the Third Reich ennobled above all high-class to high-class entertainment productions ( clothes make the man , The Swedish Nightingale , Andreas Schlueter , The Enchanted Day ); Preferably he designed costumes for poetic, historical or magical operetta-like subjects. In 1943 he was also involved in Heinz Rühmann's Die Feuerzangenbowle .

After the war, when Walter Schulze-Mittendorff found employment at DEFA , there were also committed films with a historical and socially critical background ( Die Buntkarierte , Das Beil von Wandsbek , Der Untertan ). In the early days of GDR cinema, Schulze-Mittendorff was the country's leading costume designer. The career of the versatile artist, based in West Berlin , came to an abrupt end with the construction of the Berlin Wall; his designs, which had been drafted up to August 1961, were implemented in three DEFA productions that were still in production in the winter of 1961/62. After that, Schulze-Mittendorff only created his designs for TV productions by such central directors as Helmut Käutner , Rudolf Noelte and RA Stemmle . After working on Noelte's Kafka film The Castle in 1968, he retired into private life at the age of 75.

Filmography (as costume designer)

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personal data
SURNAME Schulze-Mittendorff, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schulze-Mittendorf, Walter; Mittendorf, Walter S .; Mittendorff, Walter S.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor, special effects artist and costume designer
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1976
Place of death Berlin