Erich Engel was an exceptional director. He has been fittingly described as a "wanderer between political systems." In spite of being a self-proclaimed "Marxist to the core," maintaining a friendship with Bertolt Brecht and living in West Berlin, he managed to continuously build his career as a director without his work ever being banned, whether working under the Nazis, for the DEFA Studios or for West German productions.

Engel was born in Hamburg in 1891 and received his educational training at Leopold Jessners Acting School. With his employment at the German Theater in Hamburg in 1917 Engel started a long career as a dramaturge. In 1922 he moved to Munich where he met Bertolt Brecht and Caspar Neher. He worked with Brecht and Karl Valentin on his first film venture in 1923, a film called Mysteries of a Hair Salon. It was a short, mildly surrealistic slapstick comedy set in a barber shop. Though Engel did not return to film for another eight years, this first film foreshadowed the contributions he would eventually make to the comedy genre. During those eight years he worked frequently with Brecht in Berlin and staged the premiere of his Three Penny Opera in 1928. Engel made two comedies, Who Takes Love Seriously? and Five of the Jazz Band, before the Nazis came to power in 1933, and surprisingly, he was allowed to continue making films - predominantly comedies - throughout the Third Reich in spite of his Marxist acquaintances and tendencies.

After the war he returned to his political work. His most significant postwar film, The Blum Affair, was released in 1948 and was Engel's first DEFA production. In 1949 he received an award for that film, the Nationalpreis II. Klasse. In 1948/49 Engel continued his theatre work and collaborated with Brecht on productions at the German Theater in Berlin. His second DEFA production, The Beaver Coat, was released in 1949 and plans were made to film Brecht's Mutter Courage and Her Children, but when those plans fell through, Engel turned to West German studios for the production of his films from 1950 to 1955. After Brecht's death in 1956 Engel continued the production of The Life of Galileo with the Berlin Ensemble, which he continued to work with for the rest of his life. His last film, Bat Squadron (1958), was a DEFA production. Interestingly, until his death in 1966, Engel lived in West Berlin but worked primarily in the East where he was recognized for his work and served as a member of the GDR Academy of the Arts.

Filmography

Who Takes Love Seriously? (Wer nimmt die Liebe ernst?) 1931; Five of the Jazz Band (Fuenf von der Jazzband) 1931/32; Inge and the Millions (Inge und die Millionen) 1933; Pygmalion (Pygmalion) 1935; Hotel Sacher (Hotel Sacher) 1939; Much Ado About Nix (Viel Laerm um Nix) 1941; Journey to Happiness (Fahrt ins Glueck) 1944; The Blum Affair (Affaire Blum) 1948; The Beaver Coat (Der Biberpelz) 1949; Bat Squadron (Geschwader Fledermaus) 1958; The Lonely Life of Mr. Bruggs (Das seltsame Leben des Herrn Bruggs) 1950/51; The Grapes Are Ripe (Der froehliche Weinberg) 1952; The Man of my Life (Der Mann meines Lebens) 1953/54; Consul Stotthoff (Konsul Stotthoff) 1954; You Are the Right One (Du bist die Richtige) 1954; Love Without Illusion (Liebe ohne Illusion) 1955; Before God and Man (Vor Gott und den Menschen) 1955.