The German Academy of Performing Arts will award the renowned Hans Abich Prize this year, but not under the name of the prize patron.
Instead, at the end of the month at the TV Film Festival in Baden-Baden, she awards an “Honorary Prize for Outstanding Achievement” to the producers Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann.
The academy is reacting to research by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, which presented Abich's legal career during the Nazi era. These are taken, the Academy announced, "with surprise and dismay to note". The research results will be “checked and processed” and the prize “in view of the current situation” will not be awarded under the name of Hans Abichs.
Hans Abich (1918 to 2003) was a film producer, director of Radio Bremen, program director of ARD and co-founder of the Baden-Baden TV Film Festival (formerly the Baden-Baden Days of TV Drama).
One year after his death, the award named after him was launched.
The academy is now faced with the question of how it weighs Abich's undisputed life's work in his work for film and television, especially for public broadcasting, in the Federal Republic in comparison to his follow-through as a young man during the Nazi era.
Abich was a member of the NSDAP, a research assistant in the Reich Propaganda Ministry and editor of two propaganda papers.
As a producer, artistic director in Bremen and program director of ARD, he gave film and television great impetus in post-war Germany.