• Source: Decla Film

Decla-Film (later Decla-Bioscop after 1920) was a German film production and distribution company of the silent era, founded by Erich Pommer and Fritz Holz in February 1915.
It was formed out of the assets of the German branch of the French film production company Éclair, Deutsche Éclair, which had been confiscated by the German government at the start of World War One. Pommer had previously been director of the Austrian branch of Éclair in Vienna. The firm merged with Deutsche Bioskop AG in Spring 1920, and with Ufa in October 1921.
Decla and Decla-Bioscop produced some of the most well-known films of the Weimar era, including Homunculus, Die Pest in Florenz, The Spiders, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Destiny, Phantom and Die Nibelungen.




Founding


In 1910 Erich Pommer had become director of the Austrian branch of the French Gaumont Film Company in Vienna. At the same time, another French film production company, Éclair, which also sold its own brand of movie camera equipment, was looking to increase its presence in Austria. Pommer left Gaumont and established the Austrian subsidiary branch of Éclair in 1913 with Marcel Vandal and Charles Jourjon, answering directly to Paris and not through Berlin. At the time the German branch of Éclair (Deutsche Éclair) in Berlin was being run by Pommer's British friend Joseph ("Joe") Powell. When World War One broke out in August 1914 Pommer returned to Germany and won the Iron Cross in France in October 1914.
From the outset of the First World War, foreign production companies and their films were banned in Germany, and their entire assets confiscated. This included Gaumont, Pathé and Éclair. Despite being stationed at the front, Pommer through his co-founder Fritz Holz, a Berlin film distributor, made a successful bid for the rights to Éclair's German assets. They formed the Decla-Film-Gesellschaft Holz & Co. in February 1915. Holz resigned in mid-1915, but Decla kept the name even after Holz left the company.
With the company being guided by Pommer's wife Gertrud, Erich Morawsky and/or Carl Wilhelm who also directed a number of its early films., Decla acquired the lease of the studio at no. 9 Franz Josef-Straße, originally built by Continental-Kunstfilm, part of the Weissensee Studios. Decla produced its first 12 films here in 1915.
Pommer was transferred to the Russian front later in 1915, was wounded in the leg, and returned to Berlin in 1916. After being released from hospital in summer 1916 he trained recruits before joining Bild- und Filmamt (BuFA, Picture and Film department) at the German War Ministry in 1917, the forerunner of UFA. He was transferred as a sergeant to Rumania in summer 1917, involved in military censorship of stage and film.




Post-war mergers


Under the leadership of Erich Pommer, Decla emerged as one of the leading German film companies of the early Weimar era. Assuming control of Meinert-Film, it appointed Rudolf Meinert to oversee production.
Through Decla, Fritz Lang made his directorial debut with the silent film Halbblut in 1919 after initially being hired as a screenwriter by Pommer in 1918. At the small 'Decla-Atelier' in the Weissensee Studios during winter 1919/1920 it produced the expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene.
In March/April 1920, Decla merged with rival company Deutsche Bioskop AG becoming known as Decla-Bioscop. Deutsche Bioskop AG was originally founded in 1902 as Deutsche Bioscope GmbH (note spelling) by Jules Greenbaum and sold to Carl Moritz Schleussner in 1908. Deutsche Bioskop AG had constructed a large, modern studio from 1911 at Babelsberg in Potsdam, right outside of Berlin, and production was now concentrated there.
The following year (1921), under pressure from its creditors at the Deutsche Bank, Decla-Bioscop became a part of UFA – Universum Film AG, which had been secretly formed by the German government for propaganda purposes in late 1917. The company was absorbed in October 1921 into the giant film concern, which dominated German cinema in the interwar years. A rival, and higher offer, from National-Film was rejected. Erich Pommer was appointed as head of production for the whole outfit. Danish filmmakers such as Benjamin Christensen (Seine Frau, die Unbekannte, 1923) worked here as well.
Although Decla was now a part of UFA, the success its films had enjoyed led to the continued use of the brand name for releases for some time. As late as 1924 Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen, a big-budget prestige UFA production, was released as a Decla-Bioscop Film.




Creative teams


Significant members of Decla-Film and Decla-Bioscop that continued to work with and through UFA include Fritz Lang, F.W Murnau, Ludwig Berger, Thea von Harbou, Karl Freund, Otto Hunte, Carl Mayer, and Hermann Warm. These directors and their creative teams of photographers, set designers, dressers and musicians assembled by Pommer helped pave the foundation for the future of Weimar cinema.




Filmography






= Decla-Film (1915–1920)

=
Some articles about the following films may attribute them to Decla-Bioskop or other production companies, although they were made by Decla-Film before the merger in March/April 1920.




References


Notes

Citations




Bibliography


Hampicke, Evelyn (2015). "Jules Greenbaum". CineGraph – Lexikon zum deutschsprachigen Film (in German). Cinegraph.de. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
Hardt, Ursula (1996). From Caligari to California: Erich Pommer's Life in the International Film Wars. Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781571819307.
Kreimeier, Klaus (1999). The UFA Story: A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company, 1918-1945. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520220690.
Stibbe, Matthew (2004). Macleod, Jenny; Purseigle, Paul (eds.). "A Community at War: British Civilian Internees at the Ruhleben camp in Germany, 1914-1918". Uncovered Fields: Perspectives in War Studies. History of Warfare, Vol. 20. Leiden, Boston: Brill. S2CID 162157090.
Prinzler, Hans Helmut (2016). Chronik des deutschen Films 1895-1994 (in German). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 9783476035851.

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Éclair (perusahaan)
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• Universum Film Aktiengesselschaft
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