Kurt Maetzig
Kurt Maetzig ( born January 25, 1911 in Berlin, † August 8, 2012 in Bollewick - Wildkuhl ) was a German film director.
It significantly shaped the GDR film, particularly in its propaganda aspects. In addition, he co-founded, Mitlizenzträger and board member of DEFA. His work as a director includes not only contributions to the newsreel 23 full length feature films and six documentaries.
Life
Kurt Maetzig, son of Robert and his wife Marie Maetzig born in Lyon, already acquired in his father's company, the film printing lab FEKA and substantial knowledge about film making. He studied after high school in 1930 at the Technical University Munich, chemistry, engineering, economics and business sciences, and in Paris at the Sorbonne sociology, psychology and law. In 1935 he began to produce Titelvorspänne and advertising cartoons, and his doctorate in Munich with the topic Accounting a film printing lab.
The work in 1937 it was because of Jewish ancestry of his mother, shortly before the war, took his own life, forbidden in the film. Maetzig operation now in Berlin a little photochemical laboratory and lectured on film technique. In 1944, he joined the banned KPD.
Immediately after the war, he contributed to the reorientation of the film and renewal of German cinema in the Soviet occupation zone. He was a co-founder of the DEFA and initiator and first director of the DEFA newsreel Eyewitness in May 1946. One of the highlights of his former creation, the film was marriage in the shade after the amendment is already not so bad by Hans Schweikart. The popular actor Joachim Gottschalk had been suggested in the Third Reich, to separate himself from his Jewish wife, after which the couple chose a joint suicide. Marriage in the Shadows in 1947, the most successful German film of that time. In September 1949 Maetzig film took the Buntkarierten part as the first East German contribution to the Cannes Film Festival in 1949.
Besides this were four of Maetzig later films, two of which dealt with the life of the Communist leader Ernst Thalmann, awarded the National Prize of the GDR. In 1950 he was a member of the German Academy of Arts in Berlin (East), from 1955 he was professor of film director and director of the German Film Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg ( until 1964 ), and in 1956 he became the first chairman of the Federation of Film Societies of the GDR.
His film The Rabbit I am ( 1965) on a novel by Manfred Bieler was not to be listed. Despite this prohibition Maetzig behaved continue to conform to the system. From 1967 to 1988 he was a member of the board of the Association of Film and Television of the GDR. In 1973, he became president of the Federation of Film Societies of the Ministry of Culture. 1981 Maetzig received the Star of People's Friendship and 1986 the Patriotic Order of Merit. In 1974, he was Vice President of FICC, the International Association of Cinema Owners, and 1979 whose honorary president for life. He was member of the jury at the Berlinale 1983.
Maetzig was married four times, including to actress Yvonne Merin, and was the father of three children. His extensive written heritage is in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. He was buried on 31 August 2012 at the Berlin Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery, the funeral oration held Andreas Dresen.