Biography
Hans-Joachim Kasprzik, born August 4, 1928, in Beuthen, Upper Silesia (today: Bytom, Poland), started to work as an assistant director for DEFA in the early 1950s. In this position, he participated in Hans Müller’s "Carola Lamberti – Eine vom Zirkus" (1954), Konrad Wolf’s "Genesung" (1956), Kurt Jung-Alsen’s "Betrogen bis zum jüngsten Tag" ("Duped Till Doomsday", 1957), and Kurt Maetzig’s "Der schweigende Stern" ("First Spaceship on Venus", 1960), among other films.
His first film as a director was the TV production "Gerichtet bei Nacht". He also wrote the screenplay for the film. He then finished several more films for GDR television as a director and writer that were often made into multi-part movies, starting with the five-part movie "Gewissen in Aufruhr" (1961), starring Erwin Geschonneck.
His movie "Hände hoch – oder ich schieße!", a light crime comedy starring Rolf Herricht as highly motivated policeman Holms who suffers from the low crime rate in his village was banned after the XI plenary session of SED’s Central Committee. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and as the last of the films that were banned at the time, the film was finally finished in 2009 by defa-spektrum and opened in movie theatres.
During the second half of the 1960s, Kasprzik finished several adaptation of Hans Fallada novels: the four-part movie "Wolf unter Wölfen" (1965), starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, the two-part movie "Kleiner Mann – was nun?" (1967) and the three-part film "Jeder stirbt für sich allein" (1970), again starring Erwin Geschonneck. The three-part movie "Die Brüder Lautensack" (1972) was based on Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel of the same name.
After another TV mini series, "Abschied vom Frieden" (1977), and the film version of Gerhart Hauptmann’s novel "Bahnwärter Thiel" (1981), Kasprzik finished his most famous film in 1985, the elaborate six-part movie "Preußens Glanz und Sachsens Gloria" about historical incidents from the period of the Seven Years’ War. His daughter, the actress Anne Kasprik, was also involved in the series as well as in his last film , the "Polizeiruf 110" episode "Der Wahrheit verpflichet" (1989).
On October 10, 1997, Hans-Joachim Kasprzik died in Berlin.