Erich Pommer

Pommer was born in Hildesheim, Province of Hanover, to the Jewish couple Gustav Pommer and his wife Anna. His elder brother was Albert Pommer, who also became a film producer. After a brief apprenticeship with the Herrenkonfektion Machol & Lewin, Pommer began his film career in 1907, with the Berlin branch of the Gaumont company, eventually taking over as director of its Viennese branch in 1910. In 1912, Pommer concluded his military service and became a representative of the French Éclair camera company in Vienna, where he was responsible for film distribution to Central and Eastern Europe. In 1913, he became Éclair's general representative for Central Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Poland, based in Berlin. In the same year, he married Gertrud Levy and became, together with Marcel Vandal, the director-general of the Viennese office of Éclair. Under Pommer's direction, the company began the production of feature films including Das Geheimnis der Lüfte / Le mystère de l'air (in English, the Mystery of the Air), the first films he produced. Another five films followed in 1915.

With French capital from Éclair, and together with Fritz Holz, Pommer - while serving as a soldier in 1915 at the Western front - established the Deutsche "Eclair" Film- und Kinematographen-GmbH ("Deutsche Eclair" or Decla) in Berlin. Decla produced adventure and detective films, drama, and society pieces, as well as short film series. Its own Decla film distribution business, led by Hermann Saklikower, also presented foreign films. Pommer served in the First World War at the West and Eastern fronts, but injuries suffered in action led him to return to Berlin in 1916, where he was responsible for training recruits. Later, he worked for the Bild- und Filmamt (Bufa) at the German War Ministry.

After the 1919 merger of Decla with the Meinert-Film-Gesellschaft, Rudolf Meinert became head of production while Erich Pommer took charge of foreign distribution. Decla's production became more ambitious. The brands "Decla Abenteuerklasse" (producing, among others, Fritz Lang's Die Spinnen. 2. Teil: Das Brillantenschiff (The Spiders, Part 2: The Diamond Ship, 1920) and "Decla Weltklasse" (including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), under the direction of Robert Wiene) were created.

Decla merged with Deutsche Bioskop AG to create Decla Bioskop AG, thus becoming in 1920 the second largest German film company after Ufa. Decla owned a studio in Neubabelsberg and a cinema chain. Two subsidiaries were formed: Uco-Film GmbH and Russo Films. The Uco Film GmbH, in whose establishment the Ullstein publishing house was involved, dedicated itself to filming serials from novels. Schloß Vogelöd / The Haunted Castle and Phantom, under the direction of F. W. Murnau, as well as Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, were released. Russo Films focused on the adaptation of works of world literature. In a 1922 interview, Pommer stated that the international success of the German films would have to be linked to the production of quality pictures.

Pommer gathered around him talented directors (Carl Froelich and Fritz Wendhausen), script writers (Thea von Harbou, Carl Mayer, and Robert Liebmann), cameramen (Karl Freund, Carl Hoffmann, and Willy Hameister), architects (Walter Roehrig and Robert Herlth), as well as actors and actresses. In November 1921, Decla-Bioskop was taken over by Universum Film AG (Ufa), although it maintained a modicum of independence.

As a result of the merger with UFA, Erich Pommer not only continued as CEO of Decla-Bioskop, but also took over direction of Union-Film and Messter-Film. In early 1923, Pommer also joined the Ufa executive committee, to oversee all film production. At about the same time, he became the first chairman of the Central Organization of the German Film Industry (SPIO), which would shape German cinema during the Weimar Republic. The country's hyper inflation made expensive productions possible: at that time the work of several classical authors were adapted into movies, and internationally successful big budget films were released, including Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924), Variety (1925), Faust (1926), and Manon Lescaut (1926).

Pommer led Ufa to unprecedented worldwide prestige. However, Pommer came to disagree with the policies of Ufa's new CEO Ferdinand Bausback, including the Parufamet agreement (which later proved disastrous for Ufa as Pommer had predicted). To save face, Bausback and the Ufa board blamed the company's troubles on increasing production costs, especially cost overruns of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (UFA's most expensive film to date), on Pommer himself.