Biography:

Karlheinz Mund was born in Eberswalde, Germany, on September 11, 1937. Before studying film directing at the Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg from 1959 to 1963, he worked as a lighting technician at the DEFA Studio for Documentary Film. After graduating from the academy, he joined the studio as an assistant director to Joachim Hellwig and Walter Heynowski.

In 1964, Mund made his directorial debut with the short Harlekin, Pantalone und wir, about Eberhard Kube, one of the few pantomime artists in East Germany. Portraits of artists remained of special interest to Mund throughout his career. He explored the lives of unknown and almost forgotten creative people, including: Pierre de Geyter, the composer of the “Internationale” (De Geyter - Geschichte eines Liedes); the photographer Walter Ballhause, whose photographs from the 1930s only became known decades later (Walter Ballhause - einer von Millionen); and Elizabeth Hauptmann, an artist who worked in the shadow of Bertolt Brecht (Die Mit-Arbeiterin). Mund’s artist films are also observations on society and the political climate that stimulated or hindered artistic work. Otto Nagel 1894-1967 is a recollection of the painter’s life in Berlin; Geschichte eines Bildes is about Franz Marc and the unsolved disappearance of his famous painting The Tower of the Blue Horses; in Büchermachen in finsterer Zeit, about the fate of the Jewish publisher Fritz H. Landshoff, Mund also discusses the situation of art and artists during the Nazi era.

Among the films he directed after the fall of the Wall, the topic of art remained important for Mund. His full-length films about the writers Christa Wolf (Zeitschleifen – Im Dialog mit Christa Wolf) and Franz Fühmann (Das Bergwerk – Der Schriftsteller Franz Fühmann) and publisher/dramaturg Walter Janka (Aufgeben oder neu beginnen – Walter Janka) are reflections on important East German intellectuals as well as German history.

As of beginning of the 1980s, Mund became interested in problems faced by disabled people in East Germany. He was the only DEFA director who approached this topic, which was not always welcomed by officials. He visits a school for children with brain-damage and meets their parents and teachers in Sie brauchen uns. Spielzeug für die Schwächeren, a portrait of Helene Haeusler, who designed therapeutic toys for disabled children. RambaZamba is about an unusual Berlin theater project, in which mentally-challenged young people have the chance to develop their artistic skills.

Throughout Mund’s career, director of photography Christian Lehmann has been a regular collaborator. They worked together on Mund’s early films on expatriates in the GDR (Canto de Fé, about Spanish communists living in the GDR, and Oxi – Nein, about the over 2,000 Greeks exiled in the GDR after the 1967 military coup), his films set in Siberia (Nordzuschlag - Sibirische Charaktere, An Ob und Irtysch, and In Sibirien), and his films about critical views of the GDR (Stadtlandschaften and Warteschleife?). Lehmann also filmed Mund’s portrait of the Spanish painter Núria Quevedo (Núria Quevedo – Eine Berlinerin aus Barcelona), whose family moved to East Germany at the beginning of the 1950s and who has been married to Mund since 1960. Karlheinz Mund lives in Berlin.

Festivals & Awards:

Bibliography & More:

Schenk, Ralf. “Belästigungen. Die Filme des Dokumentaristen Karlheinz Mund.” film-dienst 15 (1998).

Schenk, Ralf. Zeitzeugengespräch mit Karlheinz Mund. Berlin: ajour. 2001.