Oberhausen Manifesto

The Oberhausen Manifesto was a declaration by a group of 26 young German filmmakers at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia on 28 February 1962. The manifesto was a call to arms to establish a "new German feature film". It was initiated by Haro Senft and among the signatories were the directors Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz. The manifesto was associated with the motto "Papas Kino ist tot" (Papa's cinema is dead), although this phrase does not appear in the manifesto itself.

The signatories to the 1962 manifesto became known as the Oberhausen Group and are seen as important forerunners of the New German Cinema that began later in the decade.^[1] Their names are:

Bodo Blüthner
Boris von Borresholm
Christian Doermer
Bernhard Dörries
Heinz Furchner
Rob Houwer
Ferdinand Khittl
Alexander Kluge
Pitt Koch
Walter Krüttner
Dieter Lemmel
Hans Loeper
Ronald Martini
Hansjürgen Pohland
Raimund Ruehl
Edgar Reitz
Peter Schamoni
Detten Schleiermacher
Fritz Schwennicke
Haro Senft
Franz-Josef Spieker
Hans Rolf Strobel
Heinz Tichawsky
Wolfgang Urchs
Herbert Vesely
Wolf Wirth

The Oberhausen Group were awarded the Deutscher Filmpreis in 1982.

A second 'Oberhausen manifesto' was published in 1965, partly in reaction to perceptions of continued conservatism in the German film industry.^[2] Led by the radical French director Jean-Marie Straub, this declaration was also signed by Rodolf Thome, Dirk Alvermann, Klaus Lemke, Peter Nestler, Reinald Schnell, Dieter Süverkrüp, Kurt Ulrich, and Max Zihlmann.

References

^ Rentschler, Eric (2012-06-01). "DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENTS: THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OBERHAUSEN MANIFESTO". Artforum. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
^ MacKenzie, Scott (2014). Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. pp. 153–54. ISBN 9780520957411.