Rudolf Meinert
Rudolf Meinert, born Rudolf Bürstein, ( born September 28, 1882 in Vienna, † March 1943 in the concentration camp Majdanek ) was an Austrian actor, film director and film producer.
Life
He left secondary school prematurely and got a job at the Technical Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. He then became a clerk in the engineering works Swadlos - sons, and brought it in 1901 as Executive Vice President. In 1903, he completed his military training.
In 1904 he made his debut in Vienna as an actor and played until 1907 at provincial theaters. In the 1907/08 season he appeared in New York at the Deutsches Theater. From 1908 to 1911 he was engaged at the City Theatre České Budějovice, where he made his directorial debut in May 1909. Other stations stage as an actor and director were the German Theatre in Pilsen (1910 /11), the municipal theater of Jena (1911 /12) and again in Vienna (1912).
Since 1913 he worked as a film director in Berlin and took over his company Prometheus film usually at the same time the production. Also in 1913 he married the script writer Erna Thurk. With its sensational and detective films, he had considerable success until he was drafted on 2 August 1914 for military service in Galicia. As a sergeant he suffered in September 1915 a serious wound that his dismissal had as a disabled veteran in October 1915 result.
In Berlin He then founded the Meinert film company, which he extended to a subsidiary in Vienna early 1916. From 1916 to 1919 he directed and produced 19 films, among others, to the master detective Harry Higgs with Hans Mierendorff as Higgs.
From 1916 to 1920 he served as board member of the Berlin Film Clubs eV, in May 1919, he was a founding member of the first Board of the Employers' Association of the German film industry. In November 1919, the film Meinert, Erich Pommer's Decla merged with Film -Ges. Wood & Co. Meinert was production manager and had in that capacity a major role in the emergence of the silent film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
After the merger of the Decla Bioscop AG in 1920, he took a seat on the board of the new Uco - Film Company, but left the group in 1921. On 16 May 1922 he founded a new Meinert Film Society. At the same time he took, starting with a biography of Queen Marie Antoinette, his directing work again. He staged ambitious melodramas and dramas and turned with the convicts a supported by the Berlin Department of Corrections socially committed film. In 1927, he founded the German - Russian film Alliance ( Derussa ) for which he produced films with an international cast.
After the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 emigrated Meinert, who was of Jewish origin, to Prague. In April 1934 he went to Vienna. In the Netherlands he prepared in the same year Het meisje met before the Blauwen hoed. Due to a royal decision to limit foreign workers, which came into force on January 1, 1935, he returned to Vienna. Here he turned to the comedy Everything for the company of his latest film, from which, under the title De mullers four at the same time was a Dutch version.
In May 1937, he emigrated from Vienna to Paris. Various sources, including CineGraph - Lexicon for German-language film indicate that he had moved to London in 1938 and believed to have died there in 1945.
To this end, writes Kay Less: " That Meinert should have gone after the > connection < Austria to the UK and in London allegedly in 1945 or died by how many sources claim can be regarded as duck. " Consequently, he was at the outbreak of World War II in stock camp de Gurs interned in southern France and spent later in the transit camp Drancy. From there he was taken on March 6, 1943, the Transport 51 from Drancy in the Majdanek concentration camp, where he perished.