“Kottan” director Peter Patzak has died

Friends of the family confirmed the news of the death. According to the “Kronen Zeitung”, Patzak died Thursday in Krems hospital. Patzak was born on January 2, 1945 as a true post-war child in Vienna. Growing up in the working-class district of Brigittenau should have a lasting impact on both him and his longtime colleague, author Helmut Zenker, as Patzak recalls in a portrait in ORF “KulturMontag”.

After graduating from school, he studied psychology, art history and painting and had his first exhibition with Albert Paris Gütersloh, the spiritual father of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. In the mid-1960s, Patzak was invited to the “Films of Art” show in New York, and several short films were made there from 1968 to 1970.

At first, Patzak worked with prominent actresses, such as Rita Tushingham in the thriller “The Situation” (1972) and Paula Wessely, who played a supermarket cashier in “Glückssache” (1977). “Paula Wessely was a completely new experience at the time,” Patzak once told the “messenger,” because she said it was a lot about the language. “I picked up clippings on the editing table and listened to them over and over again. What is Kokoschka’s line, for her is the melody of language ”. He was lucky enough to shoot with many names in film history who acted without airs.

International recognition for “Kassbach”

One of Patzak’s most important cinematographic works at that time was the neo-Nazi portrait “Kassbach” (1979), for which he gained international recognition for his clear confrontation with petty-bourgeois forms of racism, fascism and violence. After all, “Kassbach” is considered one of the favorite films of American director Martin Scorsese.

At the time he did not yet know that he would write a legendary figure and a piece of Austrian television history at the same time as Major Kottan, on whom he was working with Zenker. In 1983 he had made 19 episodes of the unusual and successful crime series and the film “The World Belongs to the Capable” (1981). Finally, Patzak returned the cult commissioner to the screen in 2010 with “Kottan investigates: Rien ne va plus.”

Numerous movies

In the 1980s he was responsible for the film “Die letzte Runde (Strawanzer)” (1983) with Elliott Gould and for the criminal thriller “Joker” (1987) with Peter Maffay. With “Killing Blue” (1988), “Gavre Princip – Heaven under Stones” (1990) and “Burning Heart” (1995) he again attracted international attention, and for “Shanghai 1937” (1996) he received the Russian Prize in Moscow. . Filmmakers. That same year, Patzak had already won the Max Ophüls award and four years earlier the Romy TV award. Doderer’s film “The Falls of Slunj” won a prize in Venice and the prize for popular education.

“At the time I thought to myself, now I can choose some pearls,” Patzak once said in an interview with the APA. But instead, the ORF didn’t get any orders, and there was a rustle: “They just forgot about me,” Patzak said. Instead, as in previous years, he devoted himself more and more to painting. In 2007 he directed “Interview” by Theo van Gogh at the Walfischgasse municipal theater for the first time on stage. Since 1993, Patzak has also taught as a tenured professor of directing at the Vienna Film Academy, which he also directed as the institute’s director.

Painting along with filmmaking

Above all, however, painting once again featured prominently. Patzak had always pursued him in parallel to his film work since 1961, and regular exhibitions took him to Switzerland and New York, among others. But now she became even more important to him. For example, the Bank Austria Kunstforum dedicated a belated birthday exhibition to him in September under the title “From the Remembrance Archive”.

The artist’s lifelong work has been honored in other ways as well. On his 65th birthday, Patzak, who also wrote short stories and screenplays, received the Great Silver Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria. Only last year was the Golden Decoration of Honor added here for services rendered to the State of Vienna.

“Crossers and people-lovers”

Correspondingly great was sympathy from prominent sources for the news of Friday’s death. “Peter Patzak shaped Austria with his cinema. We owe him many unforgettable television moments, and his work as an author and painter is also impressive, ”Culture Minister Werner Kogler (Greens) said on Twitter. There, the mayor of Vienna, Michael Ludwig (SPÖ), also paid his respects to the “border transgressor and taboo breaker”, the “people lover and collector”.

Green State Secretary of Arts and Culture Andrea Mayer was deeply affected by Patzak’s disappearance, praising Patzak as “an extraordinary all-rounder.” “Peter Patzak was undoubtedly one of the local artists who was able to most effectively portray the Austrian soul in all its facets.”

“Peter Patzak was an impressive personality, and I was deeply moved by the story of his life,” said Lower Austria Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP), noting, among other things, that the deceased had once bequeathed his legacy. to the Krems Contemporary Archive. . The authors of IG Autorinnen also bowed to Patzak’s trajectory in the form of his managing director Gerhard Ruiss: “He was a highly respected and highly valued member of the authors of IG Autorinnen and one of the most important representatives of Austrian television and of auteur films were causing a sensation across Europe. “