Broadcast Date: Paul Dessau: Let's hope for the best

17 SEPT 2023: The remarkably dazzling life of the German musician Paul Dessau is more than a good story. The film offers an encounter with an extraordinary human being.

Paul Dessau has been all together – a violinist, conductor, composer and music teacher. As a Jew, he emigrated to Hollywood during World War II; being a convinced communist, he settled over to the former GDR in 1948 and once became a state composer who was mainly celebrated on the outside, but sharply criticized on the inside. The remarkably dazzling life of the German musician Paul Dessau is more than a good story and virtually cries out for the making of a very special film. An encounter with an extraordinary human being, whose character stands unique as ornery and edgy, witty and contradictory, laconic or loving as his music.

"Paul Dessau: Let's hope for the best" by Anne-Kathrin Peitz sketches an artist's life between conformity and repulsion, political idealism and musical individuality, in which the changeable German-German history of the 20th century is strikingly condensed as if under a burning glass.

The DVD is available in the EuroArts catalogue.

Director Anne-Kathrin Peitz
Duration 53
Production year 2023
Production Company sounding images GmbH
Production Company Yellow Table Media
Production Company NDR/ARTE
Producer Claus Wischmann
Editor Steffen Herrmann
Executive Producer Sabine Puls