Volker Schlöndorff

German film director, screenwriter, and producer

• Born: March 31, 1939
• Place of Birth: Wiesbaden, Germany

Education: Lycée Henri IV; Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques; Sorbonne

Significance: Film director Volker Schlöndorff had a major influence on the revitalization of postwar German cinema. His The Tin Drum was the first German film to receive an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Background

Volker Schlöndorff was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, on March 31, 1939. His father was Georg Schlöndorff, a doctor of otolaryngology. His mother died in a kitchen fire in the home when her son was five years old. He has one older brother, Georg; but from his father’s second marriage, he also has another, younger brother, Detlef. Both brothers entered the medical profession.

Schlöndorff grew up in Schlangenbad, Germany, and attended school in Wiesbaden until 1956; in that year, he went to France as an exchange student. The arrangement was supposed to last for two months; however, Schlöndorff remained in France for ten years. He attended a boarding school run by the Jesuits, and he went on from there to the Lycée Henri IV. He received a baccalaureate from that school. The French baccalaureate is the diploma needed for admission to a university and is similar to a high school diploma. Schlöndorff also received the equivalent German degree from Frankfurt. He then studied political science at the Sorbonne in Paris.

While Schlöndorff was in Paris, he frequently visited the Cinémathèque Française, a large film library. He met many French New Wave directors there. In the late 1950s, he studied filmmaking at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris. Between 1960 and 1964, he worked as an assistant to several French directors, including Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Alain Resnais. His first film as an assistant director was Zazie dans le Métro,which came out in 1960. Also in 1960, he directed his first short film, Wen kümmert’s, under the pseudonym of Volker Loki.

Life’s Work

Schlöndorff returned to Germany in 1965 and became part of the Young German film movement. His first feature film was Young Torless in 1966. It was filmed in black and white. Like many of his later films, it was an adaptation of a German literary work. At the Cannes Film Festival, Young Torless won the International Federation of Film Critics’ (FIPRESCI) Prize and was nominated for the Palme d’Or, the highest honor awarded at Cannes. The film also won three German Film Awards—Outstanding Feature Film, Best New Direction, and Best New Screenplay.

In 1969, Schlöndorff formed a production company called Hallelujah-Film with Peter Fleischmann. Their first effort was a television production, Baal,based on Bertolt Brecht’s play. In 1971, Schlöndorff married an actress from that film, Margarethe von Trotta. They collaborated professionally, including co-writing and co-directing the successful film The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum in 1975. Adapted from the Heinrich Boll novel, the film was nominated for three German Film Awards and won two. It was also a hit at the box office.

In 1973, Schlöndorff became the principal shareholder of Bioskop Film with Reinhard Hauff and Eberhard Junkersdorf. Bioskop produced Schlöndorff’s subsequent films.

Schlöndorff achieved an enormous success in 1979 with his film version of The Tin Drum, based on the novel by Günter Grass. Grass collaborated on the adaptation of the film, which won both a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and also an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It was likewise nominated for five German Film Awards, and it won one for Outstanding Feature Film. The film also won—or was nominated for—many other international awards. The film was banned in Canada and in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, for portraying underage sexuality. After a lawsuit and hearings, the film was again allowed to be shown in Oklahoma County.

The success of The Tin Drum was followed by films with international casts. In 1985, Schlöndorff directed Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich in a film version of Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman. Louis Gossett Jr. and Holly Hunter starred in A Gathering of Old Men in 1987. This film was based on Ernest J. Gaines’s novel of the same name. In 1990, Natasha Richardson starred in A Handmaid’s Tale,which was based on Margaret Atwood’s novel.

Schlöndorff lived in the United States in the 1980s but returned to Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In 1991, he divorced von Trotta, and in 1992, he married Angelika Gruber. Schlöndorff worked to save the historic movie studio Babelsberg, and after it was converted to an international production center, he served as managing director of Studio Babelsberg from 1992 to 1997. In 2001, he became chairman of the board of trustees for the European Film Center Babelsberg.

Over the next few years, he wrote his biography, Licht, Schatten und Bewegung(Light, Shadow and Movement), which was published in 2008. In 1996, he again began directing films, with mixed critical success. The Ogre with John Malkovich (1996) was well received in the United States but not in Germany. The 1999 film The Legend of Rita won awards during the 2000 award season, as did 2004’s The Ninth Day,2011’s Calm at Sea, and 2014’sDiplomacy.

Schlöndorff has also acted in films, directed operas, and been active in politics. In 2001, he became a professor of film and literature at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. In addition to other awards, he received France’s highest honor in 2002 when he became a Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honor. The French Legion of Honor is awarded to those who swear to uphold liberty and equality. In 2009, he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Camerimage. The Camerimage is an international film festival. The famed director continued working into the 2020s, directing numerous films, including Der Waldmacher (2021) and Zeitzeugengesprach (2021). In 2024, it was announced that Schlöndorff planned to direct a film based on the all-female orchestra of famed composer Antonio Vivaldi.

Impact

Schlöndorff was one of the prominent directors of the New German Cinema and brought international attention to postwar German filmmaking. Working mostly with adaptations of literary works, he expressed social criticism and reflected a sense of justice. In 2019, Schlöndorff was named a recipient of the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Personal Life

Schlöndorff married German actress and director Margarethe von Trotta in 1971. They divorced in 1991. He married Angelika Gruber in 1992, and they have a daughter, Elena, who was born in 1992.

Bibliography

Brockmann, Stephen. A Critical History of German Film. Rochester: Camden, 2010. Print.

Garncarz, Joseph, and Annemone Ligensa. The Cinema of Germany. London: Wallflower, 2012. Print.

Kapczynski, Jennifer M., and Michael David Richardson, eds. A New History of German Cinema. Rochester: Camden, 2014. Print.

Moeller, Hans-Bernhard. "Heroes without Compromise: An Interview with Volker Schlöndorff." Journal of Film and Video 58.3 (2006): 43-53. Print.

Moeller, Hans-Bernhard, and George Lellis. Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema: Adaptation, Politics, and the "Movie-Appropriate." Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2012. Print.

Thomson, David. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. New York: Knopf, 2014. Print.

Vivarelli, Nick. "Volker Schlöndorff to Direct Film on Composer Antonio Vivaldi's Revolutionary All-Female Orchestra." Variety, 12 Mar. 2024, variety.com/2024/film/global/volker-schlondorff-antonio-vivaldi-all-female-orchestra-1235939261/. Accessed 29 Sept. 2024.

"Volker Schlöndorff." The European Graduate School. The European Graduate School/EGS, n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <http://www.egs.edu/faculty/volker-schlondorff>.