City of Lost Souls

Rosa von Praunheim, born November 25, 1942, in Riga, during the German occupation under his real name Holger Radtke, grew up with his adoptive parents in East Berlin under the name Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky. After the escape to West Germany in 1953, the family lived at first in the Rhineland and eventually settled in Frankfurt am Main. In Frankfurt, von Praunheim attended a classical language high school but left already after finishing secondary school level. He started to study painting at Offenbach’s Werkkunstschule (today: Hochschule für Gestaltung – HfG). One year later, he transferred to Berlin’s Hochschule für Bildende Künste but did not graduate any of his studies. At this time, during the 1960s, he assumed his stage name Rosa von Praunheim, as reminiscence to his Frankfurt quarter Praunheim and to the “Rosa Winkel” (pink triangle) – the symbol, homosexuals had to wear in the concentration camps during the Third Reich.

In 1967, Rosa von Praunheim made his movie debut with the short film Von Rosa von Praunheim. He sold the film to Hessischer Rundfunk and by doing so was able to fund further movie projects. Until the end of the 1960s, he finished short and experimental films like Grotesk – Burlesk, Pittoresk (1968), Schwestern der Revolution (1969), and Samuel Beckett(1969). His feature film debut, the relationship story Die Bettwurst (1970) that was filmed with lay actors and nearly no budget at all immediately became a cult film. In the same year, Praunheim caused a stir that went far beyond the gay scene with his documentary film Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation in der er lebt (It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives) – virtually overnight, von Praunheim turned into an icon of the German gay movement that experienced a downright boom through the film. —filmportal.de