Wilhelm Prager

Wilhelm Prager (born September 6, 1876 in Augsburg , † April 20, 1955 in Prien am Chiemsee ) was a German stage and film actor, theater director, film director and film producer, specializing in documentary films.

Live and act

The son of a stockbroker and business editor of the same name attended business school and then completed a commercial apprenticeship. At the turn of the century, Wilhelm Prager set his sights on acting and received artistic training at the Otto König Theater School in Munich. He made his debut in St. Gallen in 1902. This was followed by stage engagements in Meiningen, in his native Augsburg and in Vienna, before arriving in Berlin in 1907 to fulfill an obligation there at the Hebbel Theater, directed by Eugen Robert and Adolf Edgar Licho . Later, Prager also worked on the stages in the capital of the Reich led by Max Reinhardt and also directed the stage at the Deutsches Theater from 1910 to 1914. Prager went on a European tour with Reinhardt's production of King Oedipus and also performed in London, Stockholm, Budapest and Odessa.

After the end of the First World War, Wilhelm Prager switched to the film industry. He initially worked as an actor and embodied all kinds of dark men in horror stories. From 1919 until the end of the war in 1945 he made documentaries, many of which were produced on behalf of the UFA cultural film department. For some of these works in the fields of animals, agriculture, folklore and sport, Prager also wrote the manuscript. His work Paths to Strength and Beauty , which premiered in 1925 and was produced in collaboration with Nicolas Kaufmann, became particularly well-known. Its main focus is the presentation of gymnastics, sport and various forms of dance expression. In the early 1920s, Prager was also responsible for one or the other feature film, including the three fairy tale films "Der kleine Muck", "Tischlein deck dich ..." and "The foreign prince" produced in 1921 . In 1928 he made a film for the Olympic Games, and in 1930 the expedition film "On the edge of the Sahara" was released based on Prager's script .

As a documentary filmmaker, Prager's focus was always on horses. He made a total of eleven films about horse breeding (such as The Spanish Riding School in Vienna and Youth of the Lipizzaners and Paradise of Horses ), a documentary about the breeding of Trakehners in the East Prussian stud of the same name. The latter work was awarded a gold medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1936. After the Second World War, Wilhelm Prager largely withdrew from the film industry and settled in a small town on Lake Chiemsee. With Glück im Stall , an early post-war cultural film production by Bavaria, he produced his last work in 1950, which deals with the breeding and keeping of Bavarian horses. Another film project about the Chiemsee region failed due to funding.

Filmography

as an actor:

• 1919: Indian nights
• 1919: Wisp
• 1920: The Yellow Death, Part 2
• 1921: Set the table
• 1921-22: Fridericus Rex

as a director and (until 1939) screenwriter, unless otherwise stated:

• 1920: In the summer (documentary film)
• 1921: Little Muck
• 1921: Set the table
• 1921: The foreign prince
• 1924: The radio marriage
• 1925: Paths to Strength and Beauty (co-director, documentary)
• 1925: The New Great Power (documentary about the 1925 Workers' Olympics in Frankfurt / Main, also screenplay)
• 1928: De olympische spelen (documentary, only director)
• 1930: On the edge of the Sahara (documentary, screenplay only)
• 1930: Salon of the sea monsters (short documentary film)
• 1931: Secrets in Plant Life (short documentary film)
• 1932: Peasant wedding (short documentary film)
• 1933: Spiegel (only script)
• 1935: Soldiers' Songs (short film director)
• 1935: Paradise of Horses (Documentary)
• 1937: In der Rott (short film)
• 1938: Alm im Karwendel (short documentary film)
• 1939: Forest in Winter (short documentary film)
• 1939: Hunting riding (short documentary film director)
• 1939: The Spanish Riding School in Vienna (short documentary film)
• 1941: Horses on the mountain (short documentary film)
• 1941: Heuzug im Allgäu (short documentary director)
• 1942: Heavy Boys (short documentary)
• 1942: Ponies (short documentary)
• 1943: Let's go (short documentary)
• 1950: Glück im Stall (documentary film)

literature

• Johann Caspar Glenzdorf: Glenzdorf's international film lexicon. Biographical manual for the entire film industry. Volume 3: Peit – Zz. Prominent-Filmverlag, Bad Münder 1961, DNB 451560752 , p. 1324.

Web links

• Wilhelm Prager at deutsches-filminstitut.de
• Wilhelm Prager in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Wilhelm Prager at filmportal.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The new great power | filmportal.de. Retrieved April 8, 2018 .