Heinz Rühmann

Initially successful as a stage actor, the sound film ‘Die Drei von der Tankstelle’ (1930) made Rühmann one of the Weimar Republic’s most renowned movie stars. Under National Socialism, he mostly performed in comedies but also worked as a director and producer. As of the mid-1950s, Rühmann developed into a character actor, also in roles for television. Heinz Rühmann’s Archive is composed of six individual collections totalling about fifteen shelf meters in size. Rühmann’s third wife, Hertha Rühmann (1923–2016), transferred the most considerable portion of these holdings to the Kinemathek in 1997. The Deutsche Kinemathek’s expansion in 2000 into the Filmmuseum Berlin (now the Museum für Film und Fernsehen) provided the background for the acquisition. The collection includes numerous scripts for theatre and film, some containing the actor’s handwritten notations. Costumes and props from Rühmann’s movies, plans for shoots and daily schedules, music and video tapes, records, audio recordings, nearly 200 cinema and theatre programmes, press clippings, and more than 2300 stills, production and premiere photos are also part of the estate. In addition, it includes Rühmann’s personal papers and records, correspondence with other artists and politicians, private photographs, photo albums, documents related to his love of flying, scrapbooks, as well as around 100 awards, certificates and posters paying tribute to him. Moreover, about 130 books, two dozen appointment calendars and various gifts are among the private objects in the collection. Many letters from fans can also be found in Rühmann’s estate. Spanning more than six decades, they are documents of the close relationship between the actor and his audiences. In 2002 the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen showed the exhibition “Ein guter Freund – Heinz Rühmann zum 100. Geburtstag” (A Good Friend – Heinz Rühmann, Centennial Anniversary). The presentation was subsequently shown at the Filmmuseum Frankfurt. (Text: Karin Herbst-Messlinger)