Herbert Volkmann

Herbert Volkmann was involved in the German resistance to Nazism before and during the war, then worked for the German administration of the zone of East Germany occupied by the Soviet Union, where he was in charge of the revitalization of film and theatre production. One of the founders of the East-German state studio DEFA in 1946 (and its economic director from 1954-58), Volkmann took over East Germany's film archive (Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR) in 1958.

Under his direction, a hardly noticed storage place for old films soon developed into a film heritage institution of world fame. Between 1964 and 1967, he oversaw the building of a state-of-the-art conservation centre, which opened just in time to welcome the delegates of the 1967 FIAF Congress, hosted by the Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR. He was succeeded as Director by his colleague Wolfgang Klaue in 1968, but he continued to work for the archive for a number of years.

Volkmann sat on the FIAF Executive Committee from 1959 to 1969, and was the first Head of the FIAF Preservation Commission (today Technical Commission) from 1961 to 1982. He wrote FIAF's first basic manual on film preservation, published in English in 1965 under the title of Film Preservation and two years later in French (La Conservation des films). He also oversaw the publication of the Preservation Commission's The Preservation and Restoration of Image and Sound in Films (1977), wrote the chapter on preservation in FIAF's Handbook for Film Archives (1980) and made a significant contribution to Preservation and Restoration of Moving Images and Sound, published by FIAF in 1986, three years after his death. He was elected FIAF Honorary Member during the 1968 Congress in London.

Christiane Mückenberger, "Herbert Volkmann - President of FIAF's Preservation Commission - celebrated his 80th birthday", FIAF Information Bulletin, Issue 21, December 1981, pp.11-12

Herbert Volkmann, "25 years of film preservation work", FIAF Information Bulletin, Issue 25, November 1983, pp.21-26

Zur Geschichte des Staatlichen Filmarchivs. Herbert Volkmann II. geb. 22.7.1901. Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des Staatlichen Filmarchivs, Präsident der Preservation Commission in der FIAF
Das Bundesarchiv, Filmwerk ID: 8370, Archive number: 33433