Richard Oswald

The estate contains photographs of Oswald’s films, written documentation from his period of exile in the United States and personal documents. It was given to the Kinemathek in 1980 by his son, the director Gerd Oswald. Among the photographs, the emphasis is on production photos from the 1930s accompanying Oswald’s work as a director. Images related to his early moralistic and educational films are entirely lacking. The written documents include press clippings, programme notes and correspondence from the period after 1938. A collection of letters documents Oswald’s contacts with German and Israeli diplomatic representatives, museums and archives (the Museum of Modern Art, the Central Zionist Archives), American authorities, as well as topics related to film journalism and film studies in the United States and Europe. The collection also includes an introductory text to his work, written by Richard Oswald himself. Personal documents can be traced back to the period before the family’s emigration. In addition to his son’s birth certificate, they include Oswald’s certificate of origin from the city of Vienna issued in the 1920s, early documentation on his name change and his last American passport, which documents Oswald’s death during a stay in Germany. An Austrian passport, issued to his wife Käte in London in 1936, testifies to the stages of their joint emigration. (Text: Julia Riedel)