Ralph Lothar

The collection, a gift from Lothar’s son-in-law Hans Michael Mohr, outlines Ralph Lothar’s work in detail. It contains almost all of his contracts. The majority of his stage engagements are documented by photos and contemporaneous playbills. Most of the director’s scripts and film scripts in this archive are not only full of handwritten notes, markings and drawings but are usually accompanied by production documents such as shooting schedules, call sheets and architecture documents and work photos. In addition to interesting aspects of film history and documentation of Lothar’s personal life’s work, the material offers remarkable information about the revival of Berlin’s cultural industry at the start of the postwar period (which also included his involvement in Josef von Baky’s ‘Und über uns der Himmel’ in 1947) and early television history of the 1950s and 1960s. Lothar belonged to the first directors working in the field of German-language teleplays and series, for example, on the popular family series ‘Jedermannstraße 11’, a precursor of ‘Lindenstraße’, which was produced for the ARD’s regional programming starting in 1962. (Text: Gerrit Thies)