STAUDTE, Wolfgang

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Nationality: German. Born: Saarbrücken, 9 October 1906. Education: Educated as engineer. Career: Stage actor for Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator, until 1933; film actor, from 1931; writer and director of advertising films and shorts, 1930s; directed first feature, Akrobat schö-ö-ön, for Tobis Film, also co-founder, with Harald Braun and Helmut Kaütner, "Freie Film-Produktion-GmbH," 1943; worked for DEFA Studios, East Germany, 1945; worked in West Germany, from 1953; television director, from 1970s. Awards: Silver Lion, Venice Festival, for Ciske de Rat, 1955. Died: Of heart failure, in Zigarski, 19 January 1984.

Films as Director:

1943

Akrobat schö-ö-ön (+ sc)

1944

Ich hab' von Dir geträumt

1945

Frau über Bord

1946

Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are among Us) (+ sc)

1948

Die seltsamen Abenteuer des Herrn Fridolin B (+ sc)

1949

Rotation (+ co-sc); Schicksal aus zweiter Hand (+ sc); DerUntertan (The Submissive) (+ co-sc)

1953

Die Geschichte des kleinen Muck (The Story of Little Mook) (+ co-sc)

1954

Leuchtfeuer (+ co-sc)

1955

Ciske—Ein Kind braucht Liebe (Ciske—A Child Wants Love) (+ sc)

1957

Rose Bernd

1958

Kanonen-Serenade (The Muzzle) (+ co-sc); Madeleine undder Legionär; Der Maulkorb

1959

Rosen für den Staatsanwalt (Roses for the Prosecutor) (+ story)

1960

Kirmes (Kermes) (+ sc); Der letzte Zeuge (The Last Witness)

1962

Die glücklichen Jahre der Thorwalds (co-d)

1963

Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera)

1964

Herrenpartie (Me's Outing); Das Lamm (The Lamb)

1966

Ganovenehre (Hoodlum's Honor)

1968

Heimlichkeiten (+ co-sc)

1970

Die Herren mit der weissen Weste (Those Gentlemen WhoHave a Clean Sheet)

1971

Fluchtweg St. Pauli—Grossalarm fur die Davidswache

1972

Verrat ist kein Gesselschaftsspiel (for TV); Marya Sklodowska-Curie. Ein Mädchen, das die Welt verändert (for TV)

1973

Nerze Nachts am Strassenrand (for TV); The Seawolf

1974

Ein herrliches Dasein

1976

Zwei Erfahrungen Reicher (for TV)

1978

Des Verschollene Inka-Gold (for TV); Zwischengleis (Memories)

Other Films:

1931

Gassenhauer (Pick) (role)

1945

Der Mann, dem man den Namen stahl (co-sc)

1949

Das Beil von Wandsbek (co-sc)

1950

Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers (role); Tannenberg (role); Der Choral von Leuthen (role); Heimkehr ins Glück (role); Pechmarie (role); Die Bande von Hoheneck (role); SchwarzerJäger Johanna (role); Stärker als Paragraphen (role); Gleisdreieck (role); Susanne im Bade (role); Am seidenenFaden (role); Lauter Lügen (role); Pour le mérite (role); Mordsache Holm (role); Spiel im Sommerwind (role); DasGewehr über (role); Die fremde Frau (role); DreiUnteroffiziere (role); Brand im Ozean (role); Legion Condor (role); Blutsbrüderschaft (role); Aus erster Ehe (role); Jud Süss (role); Jungens (role); Friedemann Bach (role); . . . reitet für Deutschland (role); Das grosse Spiel (role)

Publications

By STAUDTE: articles—

"Aber wenn geschlagen wird im diesem Land . . . ," interview, in Film und Fernsehen (Berlin), no. 5, 1979.

"Die Mörder sind unter uns," interview, in Film und Fernsehen (Berlin), vol. 19, no. 5, May 1991.

On STAUDTE: articles—

Bachmann, J., "Wolfgang Staudte," in Film (London), Summer 1963.

"Kurt Maetzig, Wolfgang Staudte," in Information (Wiesbaden), no. 3–6, 1976.

Karkosch, K., "Wolfgang Staudte," in Film und Ton (Munich), March 1976.

Ein Nachtrag zur DEFA—Geschicte—der Regisseur Wolfgang Staudte," in Film und Fernsehen (Berlin), vol. 19, no. 9, September 1986.

Nrrested, Carl, "Glemte kontinuitets faktorer i tysk film," in Kosmorama (Copenhagen), vol. 40, no. 207, Spring 1994.

Schenk, Ralf, "Im Jahr '49. Die 'dunklen' filme von Wolgang Staudte," in Film-Dienst (Cologne), 8 October 1996.

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Wolfgang Staudte is one of the few important German directors of the postwar years. Die Mörder sind unter uns, the first German postwar film, remains today among the director's best works. In the film, a surgeon, Hans Mertens, returns home from the war, becomes an alcoholic, and lives hopelessly among the ruins. His girlfriend Susanne has survived a concentration camp and attempts to help him overcome his apathy. The apathy is quickly dispelled by the appearance of an industrialist, formerly a Nazi, whose outlook remains unchanged and who, just as before the war, uses deceptive phrases to justify the new situation.

This contemporary material was realized by Staudte in a thoroughly realistic style with expressionistic strokes in a manner that suggests analogies with Rossellini's Paisà. An English critic identified the director as a successor to Lang and Pabst. A phrase in the film—"The murderers are among us"—became a symbolic expression for the spirit of the time, in which progressive German intellectuals sought every means to reckon with the fascist past. It was not by chance that the film was made in the Soviet sector of Berlin and produced by the newly founded DEFA studios. Staudte's efforts to interest cultural officials in the western zones in his project met with no success. This was also the case with Rotation and Der Untertan, a satiric version of Heinrich Mann's novel of the same title, set in an actual embassy.

Staudte was a political artist because, as he said, he was a political person. He had perfect command of a variety of means of expression and narrative forms, and used a rich palette of symbolic images in realistically-structured filmic space. His films often led to comparisons with René Clément and Rossellini. Only his own country—the media and public as well as the authorities—could not accept him and systematically and conclusively thwarted him.

In the beginning Staudte was repeatedly labelled a communist because of his association with DEFA. He was urged to make West German films. In 1951 he decided to do so, and so began an unhappy period for him which consisted of attempts "to improve the world with the money of people who already find the world to be just fine." He was regularly reproached for fouling his own nest, and was reluctantly reduced to making entertainment films. In its headlong rush toward economic development, West German society wanted to see neither fundamental analysis of the Nazi past, nor pessimistic mistrust directed against the new, American-oriented NRD-model.

Years of harassment by the press and cultural authorities went by with Staudte working away, often in vain, writing unengaging comedies. He nevertheless made a few masterpieces: Rosen für den Staatsanwalt, Kirmes, and Herrenpartie. These films are united by Staudte's conviction that the present and the past are bound together and that man today remains inseparable from yesterday. The most imposing of these films is Herrenpartie: it confronts two worlds—that of today's German bourgeoisie, which would gladly bury Nazi memories, and that of a village of Yugoslavian widows who, despite everything, are better able to behave humanely than the Germans.

In the latter part of his career, Wolfgang Staudte directed television detective stories. His case demonstrates that the new German cinema has worthy predecessors who nevertheless remain unappreciated even by their colleagues.

—Maria Racheva