Lotte H. Eisner

Lotte Henriette Regina Eisner (5 March 1896, Berlin – 25 November 1983, Paris) was a German-French writer, film critic, archivist and curator. Eisner worked initially as a film critic in Berlin, then in Paris where in 1936 she met Henri Langlois with whom she founded the Cinémathèque Française.

Early life and education She was born Lotte Henriette Regina Eisner in Berlin, the daughter of textile manufacturer Hugo Eisner and his wife Margarethe Feodora Aron. Eisner grew up in a prosperous Jewish middle-class milieu and in 1924 obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Rostock. Her dissertation was on the development of Greek vases. One of those places was near Figeac in central France, in the cellars of Château de Béduer. Langlois instructed Eisner to go there to preserve the films (including The Great Dictator). Eisner accomplished this in freezing cold conditions for a month before running out of money. In need of help, she managed to gain a job in a girls school in Figeac. Badly treated, she began to teach German to some Spanish girls living with the local school teacher Madame Guitard, who took her in; she stayed there until the liberation of Paris in late August 1944.

After the liberation of Paris, Eisner rejoined Langlois and became Chief Curator at the Cinémathèque Française, where over a period of forty years she was responsible for collecting, saving and curating films, costumes, set designs, art work, cameras and scripts for the Cinémathèque. At the same time, Eisner began to work in private on her book L'Écran démoniaque later translated as The Haunted Screen which she described in a letter to Fritz Lang as "a book on German silent film". She also published essays, articles and film reviews in journals including Revue du cinéma, which later became Cahiers du cinéma. In 1952, Eisner published her most highly acclaimed book, L'Écran démoniaque, her study of the influence of the spirit of German Expressionism on cinema, translated into English as The Haunted Screen in 1969. Eisner appears in Herzog's autobiographical documentary Portrait Werner Herzog (1986). In his 2 February 2016 interview at Stanford University, Herzog claims that 8 years later she complained to him of her infirmities and asked: "I am saturated with life. There is still this spell upon me that I must not die - can you lift it?" He says that he did, and she died 8 days later. Wenders' film Paris, Texas (1984) is dedicated to her memory.

Death and legacy

Werner Herzog dedicated his 1974 film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser to her.

On her death in 1983, French minister of culture Jack Lang declared that the loss of Eisner would be "a great loss for the French cinema" which would be "felt with profound sadness by her numerous friends in the film world."

Wim Wenders dedicated his film Paris, Texas to Eisner in the movie's closing credits.

Honours Eisner became a French citizen in 1955 and as a result was particularly honoured to be awarded Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'honneur and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, in 1982.

Writings Murnau France 1964, US and UK 1972 Fritz Lang, Da Capo Press, New Edition 1986, Die dämonische Leinwand, engl. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, University of California Press, Second Edition 2008, Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland. Memoiren, Munich: dtv, 1988 dictated to Martje Grohmann at the end of her life this book is a memoir of her life in Berlin, her escape to Paris, her war time experiences and finally her work at the Cinémathèque Française. She talks in detail about the many amazing filmmakers, designers and actors she knew during her long life.