100th Anniversary: ​​How Artur Brauner Has Become the King of German Cinema – Celebrities, Curiosities, TV

Artur Brauner is the most important film producer in postwar German history. Now he is 100 years old. But after the celebrations, he does not feel.

By
Roland Mischke

Berlin When we saw Artur Brauner even more often on the red carpet, it was a show. The man with the huge ears, the sharp eyebrows and the carefully cut Menjou's beard was quite funny, sometimes even belligerent. Irridescent anyway. "Atze" – the name had his friend Curd Jürgens he was missing – was a notorious party-goer, who had his guests dance on tables, celebrated pompous first-timers at the Zoo-Palast Berlin and even at the award ceremony of the Federal Cross of Merit to the Federal President his jokes, But it was also striking that when he greeted one, the handshake was very soft every time.

Is this sweetness? Or, as a precautionary measure, distanced himself from any German whose state of mind he does not know? Brauner has eyes that fix fast, perceive everything, absorb everything. But if he wins the trust once, he can be very cordial.

Everything has changed since 2017. Since Maria Brauner died, after 71 years alongside her husband, at the age of 90 years. She was old, completely unexpected, death did not come. And yet, the family was not prepared for it. The great benefactor of the Jewish community, for whom Maria Brauner had volunteered for more than 60 years, accompanied her husband to events until recently.

Artur Brauner with his wife Maria in 2012 at the Berlinale.

Photo: Jens Kalaene, dpa

He, the most important film producer in the German post-war history, who shot hundreds of tapes with his CCC-Film company. He arrived in broad daylight, The Eschnapur Tiger, The Indian Tomb, The Good Soldier Schweik, Old Shatterhand, The Debris, Through Wild Kurdistan – The filmography is gigantic. And she, the strong woman behind the film king, cheerful, communicative, brilliant and with a lot of influence.

Daughter Alice runs the company of Artur Brauner today

When she died, the big void came on him. Since then, he has avoided the Berlin society, from which he has sucked his energy, his recognition for decades. "She made me happy at every moment of my life," he says. Therefore, when Artur Brauner is 100 years old, there is no party in his noble villa in Grunewald. After all, on September 8, a gala will be held in Brauner's honor at Zoo-Palast. His daughter Alice Brauner, 52, says, "My father has good and bad times, but he is spiritually clear and always likes to quarrel with me." Then there is his legacy, the Central Cinema Company. In the meantime, Alice, as General Manager of CCC, is responsible for the workshop.

"Atze" was born in 1918 under the name of Abraham Brauner in Lódz, Poland. He was the son of a Jewish wholesaler. When the Nazi Jewish community began, 49 of its relatives were murdered. He himself was hiding with his parents and his four siblings in the former border area between the German Reich and the Soviet Union, with supporters near the San River. "Twelve in a cave dug in the ground," he says in his memoirs. Noisy conversations were forbidden, the fire was only lit in thick fog.

Artur Brauner never gave much of his survival to the Nazi era. He came to the city of the murderers in 1946: Berlin. He had a cardboard box, an idea, maybe a plan – and a wish. He imposed it on himself. In the summer of 1945 near the Lviv road, now Lviv, in Kiev.

A farmer took it on a straw cart. The dirt road led along the forest. Suddenly the farmer stopped his horse. You should not go here, he said, something bad had happened. Brauner jumped out of the car and walked on a tense road of car tires. The SS had killed hundreds of Jews in the forest shortly before the end of the war. After that, she ran away precipitately, the common grave was not covered with earth.

On the top of the corpse mountain lay a boy about twelve years old. "He looked at me with open eyes," Brauner later reported. "I had the feeling that he said to me," You should not forget us. "The shock of Brauner lasted all his life, he never forgot his oath:" You must do everything to commemorate the victims of National Socialism

Artur Brauner directed one of the first films Germans on the Holocaust

The first monument was "Morituri" (Dying), one of the first German films dealing with the Holocaust. Brauner shot him in 1947 in a forest north of Berlin under crazy circumstances. He bribed Soviet soldiers with vodka and food was smuggled out of the western sector to serve as extras. There were no guns, the Red Army soldiers fired live ammunition.

Brauner had begged for the film, including his mother-in-law. The first took place in Hamburg, people in the room followed the events on the screen in disbelief. The film was boycotted after that. It was also Brauner's own story.

In his distress, he filmed the comedy "Herzkönig" with Hans Nielsen and Sonja Ziemann. It filled the cinemas. Yet it took him years to get rid of his debts. And as for the Holocaust, he came to the conclusion that people do not want to know what was. They do not want to capture it as a whole. They want to laugh and forget.

He recently told his granddaughter Laura, who was reading a family chronicle, "If you were in a room of 100 people at the time, 90 of them would have been able to kill a Jewish. "The extermination of the Jews in the Nazi era is the theme of the life of Artur Brauner.After the war, he said, he still thought that the Jews were carried by the hands. "He was naive," he admits.

But also steadily. He, who brought all the stars of the fifties and sixties, from Heinz Rühmann to OW Fischer, in Berlin, declared that he was a "naïve". Other stars: Those who stood on the wrong side.For example, he wrote to Marika Rökk: "I will never shoot with you, because in 1937 you congratulated Hitler on his birthday."

Or Hildegard Knef, she was the lover of Ewald von Demandowsky, a Nazi and head of the film company, and she did not come to her studios either.

Brauner produced 24 films on the victims of the Nazi dictatorship.They are constantly at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel.He agreed that most of them were not successes of this nema, but fulfilled his wish.With Gram, he thinks of the movie "Hitler boy Solomon" (1990), which was not deemed worthy by the German selection committee, to enter the race to l & # 39; Oscar. He found that insulting. Nevertheless, there was a triumph: the film was successful worldwide, in 1992 it received the Golden Globe. Brauner had realized "that movies belong to the public, not to filmmakers."

In 75 years, Artur Brauner has produced hundreds of productions in his CCC. Pop movies with Peter Alexander and Caterina Valente, Edgar Wallace films, "Kudamm 59" for German television, currently the Netflix "Dark" series, or the movie "Crescendo", which will soon be released in the cinema, inspired by the movie West of Daniel Barenboim -East Diva Orchestra, which is composed in equal parts of Israelis and Arabs. In "consumer films", as he calls it, he was in all genres of access. They have been called "Das Mädel aus dem Konfektion" or "Liebe, Tanz und 1000 Schlager". Almost all of them were movie hits, making them the most important German producer after the war.

He received a lot of tribute for his birthday. But there are also amazing statements in terms of the impact of the work of his life. If you ask Volker Heise, filmmaker and winner of the Grimme Award, 56, how he sees the work of Artur Brauner, the answer is: "I know him as well as not at all. He is indeed a legend of the German film, but also his ghost. I know that he made good movies, but I did not see any. "Heise is through the series Living History" Schwarzwaldhaus 1902 "and the gigantic project" 24h Berlin ", the 2014 a whole day on the ARD

Artur Brauner is popular in Berlin – and at the same time controversial [19659012] Brauner himself says, "I've told everything." He feels retired, but if he had a good idea today, tomorrow he would try to apply it. He remains hooked on a project that failed him.Brauner wanted to film the life of the German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved more than a thousand Jews from the gas chamber.He had already had the set built, but the German film promotion company refused support Steven Spielberg took over, the Germans were out The film received seven Oscars

In Berlin, "Atze" Brauner is popular and controversial at the same time. bought homes early, then entire streets in the west of the city.He had not always Bear a happy hand, he had to sell 59 properties in 2007 to repay his debts; they were seized. Banks, the old man complains, would have cheated on him. Years ago, he wanted to found an "Association to fight the plague grbadhopper". He left it then.

He preferred to enjoy the pleasant side of life. For example, to watch beautiful women. His wife Maria took it easily. "Such flirtation is good for her blood pressure," she said. The fact that he does not want to have a day off in 100 years is hardly believable. Even if he and his daughter, as they say, discuss the scenarios almost every day pbadionately. Brauner's argument seems conclusive: "As soon as I am no longer, I can stop working."

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