Edgar Reitz
Edgar Reitz (born 1 November 1932) is a German filmmaker and Professor of Film at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung (State University of Design) in Karlsruhe. He is best-known for his internationally acclaimed Heimat film series (1984–2013).
Edgar Reitz
Thomas Hönemann at German Wikipedia (Original text: Thomas Hönemann · Thomas Hönemann · Self-photographed · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Nationality
- Germany.
- Occupation
- film director, screenwriter, university teacher, film producer, television producer, writer, film editor and television director.
- Honours
- Officer of Arts and Letters, Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate, Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Wolf Prize, Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and German Film Award for Best Feature Film.
- Languages
- German.
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
gnd · 16068471-7 · wikidata · Q64392 · wikipedia · Edgar Reitz
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Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
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Early life and education
Early life and education
Reitz was born in Morbach, Hunsrück. His father Robert was a watchmaker and his business in Morbach was later taken over by Reitz's brother Guido. Reitz's interest in acting and producing plays began in his school years in Simmern, where he was encouraged by his German teacher Karl Windhäuser. After taking his Abitur, he studied German studies, journalism, art history and theatre studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München from 1952. His first experiences in film-making however were not theoretical; he worked as a camera, editing, and production assistant from 1953. His interests in the advancement of new developments in film went as far as he cooperated with Wolfgang Georgsdorf and his Osmodrama in 2016 which led to a complete scent synchronisation of his movie “home from home” which premiered as an allegedly well functioned cinema on 17 July 2016.
Documentary record
Edgar Reitz, recorded as a director, film director, cinematographer, screenwriter, film producer and actor, was born on 1 November 1932. Edgar Reitz was born in Morbach, Germany, according to the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Institut für Filmgestaltung
Institut für Filmgestaltung
In 1963 along with Alexander Kluge he founded the Institut für Filmgestaltung (Institute for Film Design) which was affiliated to the Ulm School of Design, where he taught film directing and camera theory until the School of Design closed in 1968. As part of the group around Kluge, Reitz was a participant in the Oberhausen Manifesto which was announced at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival of 1962. With this manifesto young German filmmakers demanded nothing less than a new form of cinema: "Der alte Film ist tot. Wir glauben an den neuen." ("The old film is dead. We believe in the new film"). The manifesto is associated with the motto "Papas Kino ist tot" ("Papa's cinema is dead"). Subsequently, the concept of the auteur gained in popularity in Germany, and Reitz played a significant role in shaping this concept in the following years.
Selected filmography
Selected filmography
Lust for Love (Mahlzeiten) (1967) Cardillac (1970) Trip to Vienna (Die Reise nach Wien) (1973) In Danger and Deep Distress, the Middleway Spells Certain Death (In Gefahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod) (1974) (co-director: Alexander Kluge) Zero Hour (Stunde Null) (1977) "Grenzstation" in Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst) (1978) The Tailor from Ulm (Der Schneider von Ulm) (1978) Heimat (1984, TV series) Home from Home (Die andere Heimat) (2013) Leibniz- Chronicle of a Lost Painting (2025)
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
Eight Hundred Times Lonely (800 Mal Einsam – Ein Tag mit dem Filmemacher Edgar Reitz) (2019), film portrait of Edgar Reitz by the German filmmaker Anna Hepp Filmstunde 23 Subject: Filmmaking
Edgar Reitz 2015.
Thomas Hönemann
Edgar Reitz at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival
Harald Krichel · Harald Krichel / WikiPortraits
Awards
Reitz received one of his first awards for his film Mahlzeiten which was awarded the prize for best debut work at the Venice Film Festival in 1967. In 1971, he founded Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion (ERF) in Munich. He now began to collaborate on films with his former academic colleague Alexander Kluge amongst them the 1974 fictitious documentary In Gefahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod. The lavish production costs of the 1979 film The Tailor of Ulm, which portrays the downfall of the aviation pioneer Albrecht Berblinger, caused Reitz's own financial circumstances to suffer. The film was entered into the 11th Moscow International Film Festival. It was during this crisis that the idea for a film project about his homeland, the Hunsrück, first came to Reitz. What began as an attempt at self-discovery, ultimately broadened out into the Heimat trilogy (from 1984), which met with critical acclaim, an enthusiastic international audience, and numerous prizes. With this epic and monumental production, Reitz achieved a quite new perspective, an approach, both poetical and realistic, to the past of Germany as it might have played out in the provinces. In 2004 Reitz was awarded the Carl Zuckmayer Medal by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate for his life's work. In the same year, he received the Master of Cinema Award of the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg. Reitz is married to the singer and actress Salome Kammer (who appeared in Heimats 2 and 3) and lives in Munich. In 2025, Reitz was honoured at the 20th Rome Film Festival with the Master of Film Award. He is an atheist.
Documentary record
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek records Munich as a place of activity.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Edgar Reitz, revision 1369207526 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Osmodrama Festival.
- 2.11th Moscow International Film Festival (1979). MIFF.
- 3.Tim Dams. Rome Film Festival to honour Richard Linklater, Ni DaCosta and Edgar Reitz. ScreenDaily. 30 September 2025.
- 4.Matteo Galli, Edgar Reitz, Il Castoro, 2006, p. 25.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q64392: Edgar ReitzWikimedia Foundation
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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