Hans Ertl, "Hitler's best cameraman"

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

I just heard in the radio an interview with Hans Ertl, Hitler's "best 
cameraman" and "Sonderberichterstatter" - a kind of "pendant" to Leni 
Riefenstahl.
Ertl died at October, the 23rd, 2000 at the age of 92 on his farm in Bolivia.
He was very proud of the fact that Hitler was very amused about his "tricky" 
films and that he used new "avantgarde" techniques in the way cutting films.
The casualties of the war were only "objects" for his aesthetic view of the 
world.
No, he was never a member of the party. He wasn't political. After the war he 
said he "was thrown with dirt".
Because of a documentary film about Bolivia in the early fifties he received 
a prize ("Verdienstorden") by the Bolivian Government and became a "citizen 
of honor".
In 1959 his wife died with cancer.
In 1960 he had a car accident where the most material of his new films was 
destroyed.
In 1973 his favorite daughter was shot by the Bolivian police; she became a 
member of the Communist guerilla and admired Che Guevara.
Hans Ertl, who lived alone on his hacienda in the last 25 years of his life 
never understood why his life work wasn't acknowledged after the war.

Kurt-Werner Poertner
P: S.: BTW, Otto, I totally agree with your arguments concerning the "case 
Germany vs. USA".