Biography:

Herrmann Zschoche was born in Dresden in 1934. He worked as an assistant and director of photography for the East German television news program, Aktuelle Kamera. Zschoche studied directing at the German Film Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg from 1954-1959, and became an assistant director to Gerhard Klingenberg (Was wäre, wenn, 1960).

From 1960 to 1991, Zschoche was a director at the DEFA Studio for Feature Film. His first successes were primarily children’s films, based on books by East German authors, followed by films about young people that struck a chord among the general public. Prominent themes in Zschoche’s work are the emancipation of women and the critical confrontation between young people and the older generation. His film, Bürgschaft für ein Jahr, about a divorced mother with three children, won Katrin Saß the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 1982 Berlin Film Festival.

Karla, a film on which he collaborated with author Ulrich Plenzdorf, was banned in 1965, along with a dozen other DEFA films. Officials labeled the film as nihilistic, skeptical, and hostile. Only in 1990, after the fall of the Wall, was Karla shown in cinemas.

From 1990 until he retired in 1998, Zschoche mainly directed films for major German television stations. In 2002, he published Sieben Sommersprossen und andere Erinnerungen (Seven Freckles and Other Memories), about his experience at the East German film studios. Herrmann Zschoche was DEFA Film Library's Artist-In-Residence in 2016. In 2019, he was honored with the Golden Camera by the Berlin International Film Festival.

Festivals & Awards:

Bibliography & More:

Zschiche, Herrmann. Sieben Sommersprossen und andere Erinnerungen. Berlin: Das Neue Berlin, 2002.