By Sebastian Bauer
The film scholar, author and bearer of the Federal Cross of Merit was 84 years old.
The film historian and longtime head of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Hans Helmut Prinzler, died at the age of 84 after a short, serious illness. This was announced by the cinematheque.
Born in Berlin in 1938, Prinzler initially worked as a research assistant at the Freie Universität Berlin after studying journalism, theater and German. From 1969 he worked at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin, initially as a studio manager. From 1979 he worked as a consultant for events and publications at the Deutsche Kinemathek Foundation, which he took over after the death of his predecessor Heinz Rathsack in 1990.
“He ran the house in the turbulent years after the fall of the Wall and turned it into a central film advertising institution, with exhibitions appearing in addition to the publications he always loved, carefully made and edited and the retrospective of the International Film Festival curated by the Kinemathek,” says the Kinemathek . Among other things, Prinzler was responsible for the Ufa anniversary exhibition “The German Imperium of Images” in 1992 and the show on 100 years of film history “Kino – Movie – Cinema” from 1995 in the Martin-Gropius-Bau.
In 2000 and until his retirement in 2006, Hans Helmut Prinzler also became director of the new film museum on Potsdamer Strasse. From 2010 to 2014 he worked as a curator at the Capital Cultural Fund Berlin.
Prinzler’s successor, Kinemathek boss Rainer Rother describes his predecessor as “level-headed as well as clever, it was important to him to make the right and important things possible without putting himself in the center”. Prinzler was a mentor.
Rother: “The employees of the Deutsche Kinemathek will not forget Hans Helmut Prinzler.”