Carl Boese

German film director, screenwriter and producer, who directed 158 films between 1917 and 1957. Together with Paul Wegener, Carl Boese staged his only historical film in 1920: Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem, how he came into the world). The film, based on a screenplay by Wegener and Henrik Galeen, is considered a masterpiece of German Expressionist cinema. When the collaboration with Galeen and Wegener was over, Boese returned to the Kolportagefilm; with the film Die schwarze Schmach (The Black Disgrace, 1921) he made a racist, anti-French propaganda film. In 1926 he founded his own production company in Berlin, the Carl Boese Film GmbH, which produced thirteen films until 1933, in which Boese mostly directed himself. His only interesting directorial work of the late 1920s was the restrained sociocritical film Kinder der Straße (Children of the Road, 1929). His preferred performers were Lissy Arna, Lucie Englisch, Gerhard Dammann, Julius Falkenstein, Otto Gebühr, Fritz Kampers and Paul Hörbiger.

Boese was married three times, namely with the actresses Grete Hollmann (1920), Margot Hollaender (1932) and Elena Luber (1938).

He died on 6 July 1958, aged 70, in Charlottenburg, West Berlin.