Frankfurt: A man who made film history
The cameraman Thomas Mauch shoots with many great directors
T homas mauch wrote film history. From the 1950s to the present day, he has been involved in over a hundred films and shot with directors such as Werner Herzog or Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Helma Sanders-Brahms and Werner Schröter . Mauch celebrated his first international success with Kluge’s “Farewell to Yesterday”. Mauch was the cameraman in Herzog’s monumental work “Fitzcarraldo” and enjoyed filming with Kluge in Frankfurt.
“Kluge loved this city”, Mauch knows and recalls: Whenever he walked through the station district with the director Kluge, he was always greeted, “and at some point people thought I was someone important”. And Mauch worked a lot in Frankfurt. Among other things for the television series “Die Kommissarin” with Hannelore Elsner and Til Schweiger . “I loved Hannelore Elsner very much. She was very adorable and charming, and Til Schweiger was a very pleasant one,” said Mauch, who lives in Berlin. Then he laughs and says: “I killed Til Schweiger.” Because his character Nick Siegel dies in one of the episodes in which Mauch is behind the camera.
He got on well with most of the actors. Fondly remembers working with Michel Piccoli , who stood in front of his camera in “Das ferne Land”. Only with Klaus Kinski not – he shot “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo” with him. “He was radically self-centered, but he could do something and was incredibly precise,” says Mauch.
Because he also shot a lot in Frankfurt, says the 84-year-old. Every time he comes, she is different. “You get to know them again and again,” says Mauch. “Frankfurt is one of the most pleasant cities in Germany – also because the people of Frankfurt never wanted to be anything other than Frankfurters,” says Mauch, who has traveled around the world a lot in the course of his career.
And this time, too, he discovered something new in the Main metropolis. It was the first time for filmmaker Mauch that he paid a visit to the film museum. And even more: he, an expert in his field, permanent work and gave a seminar. “Earning money is not bad,” he replies with a smile when asked why he is doing this. But something else is more important: passing on knowledge. “That is fun.” And he has a lot of that – of fun and knowledge. But it was also a learning process for him. “You first have to realize that you have something to pass on”, he muses in an empty seminar room on the top floor of the Film Museum on the Schaumainkai. He no longer works behind the camera and he is no longer absent.
Also because he is currently working on a book. “With my partner Bärbel friend . That takes a lot of demands on us. “It will be a book about all the important films in which he was involved -” that’s kind of a life story “.