The hundred-year-old photo that brought him to that “crazy piece of district history,” says Hermann Wilhelm, shows three boys on Max-Weber-Platz who don’t really fit into Haidhausen in the 1920s – from the patent-leather shoes over the handkerchiefs to their newsboy caps. One day, an over 80-year-old regular guest brought this picture to the Haidhausen Museum, whereupon the director immediately started researching it. Wilhelm soon finds out that the youngsters belong to a group of small-time crooks who lived in the hostels in the pit at the time. “Today they would be called gangsters,” says the local historian. Or in Bavarian: “Vorstadtschluris”.
For Wilhelm, however, the lettering behind them is even more exciting than the dressed-up scoundrels. “Plays of light on Max-Weber-Platz” can be read there – “and I had never heard of that,” says the museum director. This sentence is a rarity for him when it comes to Haidhausen. After all, the 73-year-old is perhaps the most profound expert on the district; On top of that, he grew up at Max-Weber-Platz and is also a film fan. But the cinema in the photo is completely unknown to him, which is why Wilhelm investigates and little by little brings to light the story of two Munich film pioneers who have largely fallen into oblivion – presumably also because they were Jews.
The fashion retailer Isidor Fett opens the cinema…
(Photo: Monacensia)
Isidor Fett, as one of them is called, ran a clothing store at Max-Weber-Platz 11 at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, film was becoming increasingly important as a new medium, which prompted the businessman, who had immigrated from Galicia, to open his shop in 1912 to rebuild the cinema – together with his partner Karl Wiesel.
…together with his partner Karl Wiesel.
(Photo: Monacensia)
For the duo, the opening of the Lichtspiele on Max-Weber-Platz is the starting signal for a “meteotic rise,” says Wilhelm. Just one year after the cinema opened, the two founded the “Bayerische Film-Gesellschaft Fett & Wiesel”, which quickly became one of the most influential companies in the industry in the city.
A silent film leads into the distant future – to the year 2000
The company produces more than 50 silent films, including several blockbusters, as we would call them today. Above all, this applies to “The Big Bet” from 1916, one of the first German science fiction films ever. Its action takes place in the “distant future”, in the year 2000, in which a physicist constructs an “electroman”, i.e. a robot. This is embodied by Harry Piel, who is also involved in the film as a director and screenwriter. “He was one of the most famous actors of his time,” says Hermann Wilhelm. “Everyone knew Harry Piel back then. He was as well known as Franz Beckenbauer is today.”
A visit to the Elektromenschen: “A fantastic experience from the year 2000” promises the 1916 silent film “The Big Bet” produced by Fett und Wiesel.
(Photo: Haidhausen Museum)
Fett und Weasel produce several other films together with the superstar; Wiesel is also temporarily the managing director of the “Harry Piel Film Company GmbH”. The two producers were among the big players in the Munich film scene at the time. Accordingly, her company was one of the seven companies that – in order to oppose the market power of Ufa in Berlin – joined forces to form the Emelka in 1920. Its name is derived from the abbreviation MLK, which stands for Munich cinematographic art. This company, which is active throughout Europe, not only owns 100 cinemas in southern Germany, but soon also the first film studios in Geiselgasteig – the nucleus of today’s Bavaria Filmstudios.
Both sit on the board of Emelka, from which Bavaria Film emerged
In addition to Peter Ostermayr, directors Isidor Fett and Karl Wiesel are also on the Emelka board South German Film Newspaper then writes. But while Ostermayr is still universally praised as a film pioneer and founding father of Bavaria Film, fat and weasel have almost completely fallen into oblivion, says Hermann Wilhelm. “They are mentioned only briefly or not at all in most publications on the history of the Geiselgasteig film studios.” The two share this fate with a number of Jews who held prominent positions in the 1920s. “After the war, nobody wanted to remember them and their stories,” says the Haidhausen local historian. “A lot has been forgotten.”
The Haidhausen Museum shows an exhibition about Munich’s forgotten film pioneers.
(Photo: Haidhausen Museum)
In order to revive the memory, Wilhelm has designed an exhibition about Isidor Fett and Karl Wiesel, which will open this Sunday. It traces the rapid rise of the duo as well as its sad end. While Fett died unexpectedly in 1933, his partner suffered from the harassment of the Nazis in the years that followed and had to be insulted like other big names in the industry as a “film Jew”. In 1938 Karl Wiesel and his wife fled to Switzerland; three years later they board the SS Navemar with destination Havana. “It was an ore and coal freighter on which more than a thousand refugees lived under terrible conditions,” says Wilhelm. Six passengers die on the high seas – including Karl Wiesel, who dies of typhus. The German-Jewish newspaper reported at the end of 1941 construction in New York: “Karl Wiesel, one of the leading men in the German and European film industry, is, as we are only now finding out, on the ship of the wreck Navemar died in the arms of his wife on August 25, shortly before his 60th birthday.”
Opening of the exhibition in the Haidhausen Museum, Kirchenstr. 24, on Sunday at 2 p.m. After that until the end of June every Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and from Monday to Wednesday 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The exhibition is accompanied by the book “Artists, cinemas, folk theater – art and culture in Haidhausen”, which is available in the museum for 30 euros.