Biography:

Kurt Tetzlaff was born in Tempelburg, Germany (now Czaplinek, Poland) in 1933. In the last days of WWII, his hometown was occupied by the Soviet Army; his family had to leave and settled in Querfurt (in Saxony-Anhalt), where Tetzlaff graduated from high school with qualifications for university study in 1952.

Tetzlaff joined the DEFA Studio for Popular Science Films as an assistant dramaturg and scriptwriter, where he continued working while studying directing at the Deutsche Hochschule für Filmkunst (now Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) in PotsdamBabelsberg from 1955 to 1960. Tetzlaff’s directorial debut at the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films was with Die erste Seite einer Chronik in 1961. This short documentary, about the challenges faced by coal miners in 1945, was his diploma film. Over the following three decades until the DEFA Studios were closed in 1992, Tetzlaff directed almost 40 short and full-length DEFA documentaries. Many of his films were insightful portraits of East German workers and young people caught up in the challenges of daily life as well as contemporary political and social events.

Throughout his career, Tetzlaff was a critical observer of the East German realities that he explored in his portraits. He faced censorship early in his career. In 1964, his portrait of a youth brigade at a petroleum production plant—Es genügt nicht 18 zu sein—was banned because it allegedly “disparaged the working class.” After he re-edited the film, a shorter version entitled Guten Tag, das sind wir was released in 1966. In the mid-1970s, his thematic interest took him to the Soviet Union. He visited the Drushba (Friendship) gas pipeline in the Ukraine—an official project of the GDR and its youth organization, the Freie Deutsche Jugend—and produced two documentary reports on the harsh working conditions and personal struggles of the East German workers there: Begegnung an der Trasse and Alltag eines Abenteurers.

Tetzlaff also created insightful film portraits of German artists, which make up a significant part of his remarkable oeuvre. These include films on graphic artist and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz (Saatfrüchte sollen nicht vermahlen werden) and playwright Bertolt Brecht (Die Pflaumenbäume sind wohl abgehauen and …und sie bewegt sich doch). His powerful film on the American actor, singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, I’m a Negro, I’m an American – Paul Robeson, is one of the few existing full-length documentaries on the artist. Co-produced with the West German Chronos production company, the film was originally meant to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Robeson’s birth in 1988. Although the film sparked great interest when it premiered at the Leipzig International Festival for Documentary Film in 1989, its success was overshadowed by the events of the Wende.

Three of Tetzlaff’s major full-length documentaries discussing contemporary events in the GDR stand out as distinctive contributions to East German documentary filmmaking. In preparation for his 1983 production Erinnerung an eine Landschaft - für Manuela, he spent three years observing the destruction of villages and landscapes in the path of open-pit mining projects; the film explores politically sensitive environmental issues related to losing one’s home and ravaging nature in the name of progress and prosperity. The last two films Tetzlaff made at the DEFA Studios—Im Durchgang - Protokoll für das Gedächtnis and Im Übergang - Protokoll einer Hoffnung—offer a unique chronicle of the tumultuous changes that took place in East Germany in 1989-90. Over the course of a year, Tetzlaff followed Alexander Schulz, the son of a pastor graduating from high school, and other young people who were part of the GDR’s alternative political scene. His extended observation reveals a lot about the feelings of young people during the last months before the Berlin Wall fell and the ensuing year of changes. In front of the camera, young people share their hopes and dreams of revolution, which ultimately end in resignation.

Tetzlaff ventured into other areas of filmmaking as well. Always interested in puppet animation, in 1964, he wrote and directed a children’s puppet film about a boy who does not want to learn: Das Märchen vom Jens und dem Kasper. Based on a film script by Heiner Carow (Icarus, The Legend of Paul and Paula), this film was shown at the Cannes International Youth Festival. He also collaborated on two films—writing the scenario and co-authoring the script— with Kurt Weiler, one of East Germany’s masters of animation. One is a puppet-animation history, in three parts, about the influence and power of money, Nörgel & Söhne (Nörgel & Sons, 1967-69). Das Geschenk – eine beinliche Geschichte (The Present, 1974), is about the manipulation of young people. In 1974, Tetzlaff directed his only fiction feature film, Looping—the story of a carefree, 30-year-old worker whose life changes when a co-worker is killed in a carbide furnace explosion, and he is blamed for the accident.

Alongside directing, Kurt Tetzlaff taught at the Deutsche Hochschule für Filmkunst from 1964 to 1969 and was a member of the committee for the Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film from 1973 to 1989. After the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films closed in 1992, Teztlaff was one of few East German documentary filmmakers able to continue working in unified Germany. Among other films, he directed a TV documentary about the 1956 Hungarian uprising: Am Rande eines Krieges – der ungarische Aufstand 1956.

Kurt Tetzlaff died on July 4, 2022.

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