Heinz Köster

Köster is said to have been trained during the Second World War as an aerial reconnaissance photographer. An avid fan of both technology and film, he accompanied the Berlin International Film Festival from its beginnings. The first German “paparazzo” only lived to see his 50th birthday and never got the chance to experience the later appreciation of his work outside daily news coverage. Heinz Köster’s archive preserved at the Kinemathek comprises more than 100,000 negatives and 50,000 vintage prints. His widow transferred the estate in 1985. It was enhanced with a copyright protection contract in 2010. Around 20,000 press photos, which were taken as part of the image coverage at the Berlin International Film Festival held during the period from 1951 to 1967, form a contextual and quantitative main emphasis. From today’s view, these Berlinale photos go beyond capturing individual events at the film festival. They also uniquely document the zeitgeist between the dawn of the postwar period and the development of West Berlin. A lesser-known augmentation to these holdings is made up of photographs taken in the 1950s at the film festivals in Cannes and Venice. Aside from these, there are 20,000 portraits of major stars of the period, all ordered by name ‒ for instance, Romy Schneider, Hildegard Knef and Sophia Loren. Photo series can also be found among the portraits, made independent of the film festivals, in private or at other events. A further 10,000 production photos ‒ featuring sets, premieres and promotional shots ‒ were taken to accompany films such as Billy Wilder’s ‘One, Two, Three’ (USA, 1961) and Jean Chapot’s ‘Schornstein Nr. 4’ (FRG/France, 1966). (Text: Julia Riedel)