He survived the Holocaust and founded in post-war Berlin, his film company, CCC. Artur Brauner has created films such as “Old shatterhand” and “Hitler boy Salomon”. At the age of 100 years, the film producer, has died.
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Film producer Artur Brauner died
Artur Brauner, one of the most successful German movie producer, is dead. He died at the age of 100 years in Berlin, his family announced. Brown was peacefully asleep.
His life story reads like a novel. On 1. August 1918 in Lodz/Poland into a Jewish family to be born in, fled Artur Brauner 1940 from the Nazis in the Soviet Union.
He survived the war and decided to establish, in 1946 – in spite of all the atrocities of the Nazi regime – in Berlin of all places, his production company CCC, the “Central Cinema Compagnie”. On the site of the former powder factory, Spandau, Berlin-Haselhorst, he built his own Studios.
Between “Tralala” and award-winning dramas
Brown drove in the movie business is always a two-pronged approach. For one he produced light entertainment fare – “Tralala-movies”, he called you. The other award-winning dramas and historical films about the time of the Nazi dictatorship emerged in CCC.
To the first genus of the love story “An angel on earth” with the young Romy Schneider, or “the erotic to the school were undoubtedly”. Voltage delivered several Edgar Wallace and Karl May film adaptations – all street sweeper. In Brauner’s former employee, Horst had actually Wendlandt, the Winnetou-and-Co-films to the Start brought.
Pierre Brice and Lex Barker in “Winnetou and Shatterhand in the valley of the dead” (1968): All street sweeper
However, “Atze” Brauner saw the potential and secured as a resourceful business man, the rights to all of the Karl May novels were still free. He also drew actors like Pierre Brice as Apache chief Winnetou and Lex Barker as his blood-brother Old shatterhand in the country.
Under Brauner’s Aegis also outstanding classics such as “It happened in broad daylight” – the story of a child murderer based on a screenplay by the Swiss Friedrich dürrenmatt. Also “The day the rains came”, a movie about a young gang of criminals, or the film adaptation of Gerhard Hauptmann’s novel “The rats” were milestones in the demanding German post-war cinema.
Films against Forgetting
It was, of all things, the memory of a Film that helped him in the Second world war, to escape a Nazi, said Brown in the “time magazine” a few years ago. To be the beginning of the war, it came on the river Bug to a dangerous confrontation, so Brown: “Then something that you can imagine actually happened: I had a saving flash of inspiration. I suddenly remembered a movie with Gary Cooper that I had as a teenager seen: Three bandits force Cooper, the Plan of a gold mine out back. He refuses to do so. All are on the water, just like me with the Nazi. As the Bandit aims to Cooper, ramming him with his head in the stomach and pushes all three into the water.”
Inspired by this scene, he gave the Nazi a “powerful shock”, so that it fell with the rifle in the water, so Brown. “I pulled up the pants and ran, until I could no longer see him.” And he survived, unlike most of his Jewish Relatives.
In an Interview with the German wave in 2016, Brown said, the confrontation with the eyes of a dead Jewish boy who was killed in the last days before the end of the war by the SS, got him to fulfill his dream of youth and to enter film business. “My intention was to produce a Film about the innocent victims, the destruction of an entire people.”
And, therefore, Brown dealt with the theme of “the Holocaust”. The second production of the then recent German producers, “Morituri” (1948), was the first Film that dealt after the war with the Shoah.
Scene from “Hitler boy Salomon” (1990): films against Forgetting
Him, many more followed, including “The white Rose”, “Babij Jar”, “miracle children” or “Hitler boy Salomon”, which earned him a Golden Globe should be. There are movies to Forget, the displacement of the Nazi period, which Brown said to the German a mirror.
Resourceful business man and a great strategist
No matter what turning Brown: Almost all of his movies were Gold. He repeated the German Hollywood-emigrants back to Germany, such as, for example, directed by Grand master Fritz Lang, made for the CCC of his last films “The Tiger of Eschnapur” and “The 1000 eyes of Dr. Mabuse”. Or Robert Siodmak, whom he entrusted with the captain of the adaptation of “The rats” (1955), starring the German screen stars Maria Schell and Curd Jürgens roles.
Brown persuaded also Romy Schneider, the last Film in Germany, “The passerby of Sanssouci” (1982), as yet no one suspected that she would, shortly after the Premiere of life. She died in may 1982.
According to the magazine “film service” was coined by Brown and his CCC more than five decades, the German Film and was for more than 250 film and television productions is responsible. He was the typical “economic miracle” -an entrepreneur. In the heyday of German film Stars such as Hans Albers, Heinz Rühmann, Gert Fröbe, or Lili Palmer in front of the camera were at the time of his production company, CCC.
Producer Brown with the Stars Romy Schneider and Lilli Palmer (1958): a tough negotiating partner
He did not interfere in the work of its Director, so Brown, only if the daily copies of the rotary material defects would have followed. However, he was enough of a businessman, to pull the tear line when the Budget was covered. So he replaced in 1965 at the Karl-May-Film “Through wild Kurdistan” Director Franz Josef Gottlieb, the rotation had covered the plan in Spain and costs completely.
As a tough negotiator, he was notorious. American actor Lex Barker, for example, he wanted to pay after the shooting of two movies in a row, only the Gage for a Film. Before the court, but he lost against the famous actor who had sued for the Payment of arrears.
CCC remains in the family
At the company CCC Brauner’s daughter Alice is now following in the footsteps of his famous father, entered. She has continued as a producer for a number of years, the life’s work of her father. At the Berlinale 2018 steps both still together on the red carpet.
Brown was a member of the Jewish community in Berlin, and called in 2018 the youth to stand against the rise of right-wing populism in the society. He was awarded the Federal merit cross, twice, the Golden Globe and the Ehrenbär the Berlinale for his life’s work. In 2013, he received the needle of honour of the society for Christian-Jewish cooperation.
In the international Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Israel, will be shown since 2009, a total of 21 of his film productions regularly, all of which have a reference to the Shoah. The film producer himself called these demonstrations for visitors to the memorial as “a culmination of my film-making”.