Biography
Günter Haubold was born August 30, 1926, in Freiberg, Saxony. After an apprenticeship as a fiscal aide, he entered the film business in the early 1950s and took over the post of assistant camera operator at DEFA. His teachers at DEFA included Karl Plintzner, among others, one of the most prominent cinematographers in Babelsberg at the time. After several years as assistant camera operator, for instance, for Gerhard Klein"s film "Eine Berliner Romanze" (1956), Haubold worked as a cinematographer in his own right from 1959 on.
During the following three next decades, Günter Haubold became one of the most important cinematographers of DEFA film production. At the beginning of his career, in particular, he was leaning towards the camera style of the 1920s. But his abilities were not restricted to the sparse realism of his images for Ralf Kirsten"s film "Steinzeit-Ballade" (1960), a film about the fight for survival by Berlin rubble women. He also managed to create opulent images for political period films like the semi-documentary two-part movie "Die gefrorenen Blitze" ("Frozen Flashes", 1967) about the Nazi attempt to build rockets in Peenemünde. For the film, Haubold used the Scope format for the first time. The same counts for the drama "KLK an PTX – Die rote Kapelle" ("KLK Calling PTX – The Red Orchestra", 1971) about the Third Reich resistance group of the same name. Haubold shot the film on 70 mm film.
Further movie productions with Günter Haubold at the helm as the cinematographer include the comedies "Nelken in Aspik" (1976) and "Anton der Zauberer" ("Anton the Magician", 1978), both directed by Günter Reisch, the award-winning, chamber-play like love story "Ein April hat 30 Tage" ("April Has 30 Days", 1979), or the semi-documentary ensemble film "Alle meine Mädchen" (1979) that saw Haubold also as a co-screenplay writer.
During the 1980s, he increasingly collaborated with younger directors and, for instance, worked with director Karl-Heinz Lotz for the film "Junge Leute in der Stadt" (1985), a portrait of Berlin in 1929, and with director Michael Kann for the film "Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn…" (1987). The film tells the story of an avid member of Hitler youth who has to learn that he is half-Jew. Furthermore, Günther Haubold taught as a lecturer at Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
Simultaneously to his productions for DEFA, Haubold repeatedly filmed TV movies. He, for instance, was in charge of cinematography for the film version of Stephan Hermlin"s story "Der Leutnant Yorck von Wartenburg" (1981) about the resistance fighter against the Third Reich of the same name and for the film "Die erste Reihe" (1987) that also dealt with the lives of opponents to the Nazi regime.
Günter Haubold‘s last film as a cinematographer was "Der kleine Herr Friedemann" (1990), directed by Peter Vogel. In 1991, Günter Haubold left DEFA. Until his death, he lived with his family in Kleinmachnow near Berlin. On December 22, 1999, Günter Haubold died of cancer in Berlin.