Carl Wilhelm

Carl Wilhelm remained a sought-after director until the end of the silent film period. He then ceased to work almost entirely - he is last heard of as a production assistant in 1935.

He left Germany for Vienna after the coming to power of the Nazi party in 1933 and, already ill, joined his son Wolfgang in London where he died in 1936.

In 1917 and 1918 he made a number of films in Hungarian.

In 1915, with his company Cewe-Films, and in 1920/21, with Carl-Wilhelm-Film GmbH, he also operated as his own producer.

The two comedies he shot in 1913 and 1914 with Ernst Lubitsch - Die Firma heiratet and Der Stolz der Firma - were very successful. As late as 1919 a critic could write: "Die Firma heiratet and Meyer aus Berlin are still our best films.".

After his first work, the short documentary film Ein vergnügter Wintertag im Berliner Grunewald, made for the producer Oskar Messter in 1909, Wilhelm worked for many other Berlin production companies. For example, in the years before World War I, he filmed for Deutsche Mutoskop- und Biograph GmbH in Lankwitz and BB-Film-Fabrikation Bolten-Baeckers in Steglitz a series of comedies starring the silent film star Leo Peukert.

He began his career at the theater in Graz in 1899. In the next years he was also engaged in Germany like Düsseldorf and Berlin. In 1905 he was engaged by the legendary Viennese Burgtheater.

Carl Wilhelm was born on February 9, 1872 in Vienna, Austria.