HERZSTARK NITSCHE RAUCHFUSS SCHMOLL & Co
a cinematographic family-album, 1925 – 1935.
Selected and assembled by Gustav Deutsch
With sequences from films by the families Herzstark, Nitsche, Rauchfuss and Schmoll, as well as anonymous film materials from the collection of the Austrian Film Museum.
The sequences for this cinematographic family album derive from films, that have been shot 70 years ago, and were never shown, besides in the closed family circle at that time. These amateur movies have been shot with the Pathé-Baby camera, launched by the French film equipment- and production company Pathé Freres in 1922. The Pathé-Baby home-cinema system consisted of the camera, the first home film projector of film history, and the new 9,5mm film format, that became very successful during the next decade.
It's for sure no coincidence, that the first home-cinema system had the name Pathé-Baby, as the youngest family members were one of the main subjects of the early home movies. But also the first filmic records of the oldes family members, as well as plays with the pets were reasons to turn the handle of the Pathé-Baby. Weekend pleasures, winter sports, carnival and family feasts, like birthdays, marriages or Christmas, could be – recorded on celluloid – relived in the family circle.
Film was not a medium for the masses at that time, and therefore it is not astonishing, that two of the families, the footages were coming from, were owners of well known industrial companies of the city: the calculating machines company AUSTRIA HERZSTARK & Co, and the shoe cream company SCHMOLL. Both factories gained publicity through two inventions: the first calculating machine in pocket format, called Curta, after the inventor Curt Herzstark (1902 – 1988), and through the 1932 pantented, like a wing nut formed cover of the SCHMOLL cream can, by company founder Karl Schmoll von Eisenwert (1852 – 1936).
Realisation
Gustav Deutsch
Production
A production of WIEN MUSEUM for the exhibition "Kampf um die Stadt. Politik, Kunst und Alltag um 1930"
Research
Realised in the context of the project FILM.STADT.WIEN, supported by Wiener Wissenschafts-, Forschungs- und Technologiefonds
Project leader:
Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Geschichte und Gesellschaft / Sigfried Mattl
Partner:
D&S / Gustav Deutsch, Hanna Schimek, Österreichisches Filmmuseum
Collaborator:
Karin Fest, Michael Loebenstein, Vrääth Öhner
Sound
Gustav Deutsch, Martin Siewert
Technical assistance
Michael Loebenstein, Manfred Neuwirth, Edith Schlemmer, Georg Wasner
Telecines
Adelheid Heftberger and Mirco Santi in cooperation with the University of Udine “La Camera Ottica“ and the Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia
Support
Medienwerkstatt Wien
Thanks to
Wien Museum, Wolfgang Kos
Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Alexander Horwath
