Walter Zerlett-Olfenius

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Walter Zerlett-Olfenius (born April 7, 1897 in Wiesbaden , † April 18, 1975 in Füssen ) was a German screenwriter .

Live and act

After attending schools in Hanover and his native Wiesbaden, Zerlett-Olfenius volunteered at the 80th Fusilier Regiment in Wiesbaden at the beginning of the First World War . He initially served as a flag junior and (from summer 1915) as a lieutenant, later on in the war, Zerlett was active in the intelligence service (NOB) of the general staff due to his language skills (English and French). After the end of the war in 1918, he served briefly in the Schutz-Regiment-Groß-Berlin .

In the early 1920s, the son of a music director studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin and attended the commercial college . At the same time, he took his first professional steps in the insurance industry. From 1922 to 1924 he worked as an authorized signatory, later also as a co-owner of a Berlin injection molding plant, after losing his fortune as a buyer for the British company London Company of General Trade . In the autumn of 1925, Zerlett moved to the German Radio Technology Association (DFTV), the predecessor of the German Amateur Radio Club, as Secretary General . In the service of the DFTV, Zerlett worked for the first time as a writer ( The Origin of the Northern Lights ), created its press releases, wrote brochures ( DFTV versus radio interference , electricity and radio interference) and was involved in the field of radio magazines. In 1933/34 Zerlett served as a consultant for the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft , but finally switched to the film business in 1934 and worked in various activities (recording and production manager) for his brother's films, the screenwriter and director Hans H. Zerlett .

Active as a screenwriter since 1935, Zerlett, who from now on appended his mother's maiden name, Olfenius, to his father's name, concentrated on the close cooperation with the director Herbert Selpin from the start . Zerlett-Olfenius wrote the templates for all popular film genres. His dramatic stories were particularly successful, including two adventure films and a marriage and travel material as well as a Nazi propaganda film, all with Hans Albers ( water for Canitoga , A man on astray , Trenck, the Pandur , Carl Peters ).

In 1942 Selpin realized the Titanic sinking scenario . Ostensibly an early example of a trick technically quite successful disaster film , mediated the work considerable anti-British propaganda: The captain of the luxury liner is assertive weak in Zerlett-Olfenius' manuscript, the accompanying shipping company owner Ismay ruthless and greedy. Only the first ship officer Petersen, a German - a fictional film character ordered by Joseph Goebbels ' Propaganda Ministry - shows strength of character and appears in the final sequence as a moralizing accuser in court.

Titanic also played a dramatic role in the life of Zerlett-Olfenius personally. In the presence of his scriptwriter, Selpin allegedly made derogatory comments about the German chances of victory in the Second World War and the clout and morale of the Wehrmacht during the filming on the Cap Arcona in Gdynia harbor . Zerlett-Olfenius denounced the director to his friend Hans Hinkel, saying that Selpin had uttered "vile defamations and insults to German soldiers and officers from the front". Selpin was then arrested and died a little later under circumstances that were not entirely clear. Titanic was Zerlett's last completed screenplay contribution to the cinema, his denunciation, which ultimately cost Herbert Selpin his life, only brought him the contract to edit Felix von Eckardt's screenplay for the comedy The weak hour at the end of the same year in 1942 . After that, he was no longer able to land a script assignment. Whether Zerlett or possibly his lover Hansi Köck, who was employed as a script girl during the filming of Titanic and who was responsible for denouncing Selpins, remains unclear.

Zerlett-Olfenius' last work for the cinema was made at the beginning of 1945. He drafted a script for a piece of propaganda in honor of the German Navy: Auxiliary cruiser . The film was not made because the war was about to end.

In August 1947, because of his denunciation of Selpin, Zerlett-Olfenius was classified by the court in Munich in Group I of the main culprits of the Nazi regime and sent to the Moosburg labor camp for a period of four years. Half of his property was confiscated. Due to his life-threatening health, he was released in 1947 on incapacity for prison. Zerlett's lawyer went on appeal and had the case against his client dropped in December. He retired to the hamlet of Osterreinen near Roßhaupten in the Allgäu without ever working for the cinema again. His wife was the actress Eva Tinschmann .

Filmography

literature

  • Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 435.
  • Friedemann Beyer: The downfall of the film director Herbert Selpin: Chronicle of a denunciation . Manuscript for the radio broadcast of Bayerischer Rundfunk from 2/3 August 2014.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The film scholar Hans Schmid in his series of articles "The Third Reich in Self-Experiment" - Part 6: "The Russians are coming! But where?" on the telepolis homepage April 25, 2010 (accessed November 27, 2014)
personal data
SURNAME Zerlett-Olfenius, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH April 18, 1975
Place of death Feet