Arnold Fanck

Arnold Fanck was born on 6 March 1889 in Frankenthal, Germany. Together with Odo Deodatus Tauern, Bernhard Villinger and Rolf Bauer, Fanck established the company "Berg- und Sportfilm GmbH Freiburg" in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1920. Fanck, who held a PhD in geology, directed mountain films, sports films and ski films. He was assisted by Sepp Allgeier, a cameraman who later worked with Leni Riefenstahl, and worked mostly in the Alps in locations such as the Engadine, Zermatt and the Arlberg and on mountains such as Mont Blanc and Piz Palü. His most popular and successful films of the period between the wars include The Holy Mountain (1926), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Storm over Mont Blanc (1930), The White Ecstasy (1931), and S.O.S. Eisberg (1933)—all starring Leni Riefenstahl. During the Nazi regime, Fanck got in trouble with propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, since he refused to cooperate — apparently because of the necessity of joining the party. In 1934, he also began working on his film, The Eternal Dream, which not only starred a French hero in French mountains, but also had a Jewish producer, Gregor Rabinovitch. This conflict brought Fanck economic difficulties from which he escaped only by accepting a contract from the Japanese ministry of culture in 1936. With The Daughter of the Samurai and other "culture films," Fanck decided to cooperate with the Nazi regime. Soon afterward, he produced A German Robinson Crusoe (1938/40) a propaganda film for Bavaria Filmkunst. Fanck joined the NSDAP in April 1940. In 1944 he made a documentary about the sculptor Arno Breker called Arno Breker – Harte Zeit, starke Kunst. After World War II, Fanck's main films made during the regime were proscribed by the Allied military governments. Fanck received no further job offers and went to work as a lumberjack. After the screening of his film The Eternal Dream at the mountain film festival in Trento in 1957, Fanck was once again recognized for his artistic achievements. In order to survive his economic difficulties, however, he was forced to sell the rights to his films to a friend, until TV broadcasts improved his situation. Fanck died on 28 September 1974 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, at the age of 85. He is buried in the Hauptfriedhof in Freiburg.