Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), also credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker, dramatist, and actor. He is considered a central figure and driving force of the New German Cinema movement. Over his career, he directed more than forty films that mixed Hollywood-style melodrama with social critique and avant-garde methods. Fassbinder described his own work as an investigation into "the exploitability of feelings." His films were firmly set in the context of post-war Germany, dealing with the legacy of Nazism, the country's economic miracle, and the Red Army Faction. In his early work, he concentrated on people on the margins of society, including migrant workers, prisoners, and gay individuals. He regularly collaborated with a stable group of actors and technicians who appeared in many of his projects.

Fassbinder began leading the Anti-Theater acting troupe in 1967, staging some of his earliest productions with them. His first feature-length film was the gangster movie *Love Is Colder Than Death* (1969). He achieved his first domestic commercial success with *The Merchant of Four Seasons* (1972), and his first international success with *Ali: Fear Eats the Soul* (1974); both are now regarded as masterpieces. Later, he took on larger-budget projects such as *Despair* (1978), *Lili Marleen* (1981), and *Lola* (1981). His biggest hit was *The Marriage of Maria Braun* (1979), which follows a German woman's rise and fall after World War II. Other notable films include *The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant* (1972), *Fox and His Friends* (1975), *Satan's Brew* (1976), *In a Year of 13 Moons* (1978), and *Querelle* (1982)—all of which explore homoerotic themes. He also directed the television series *World on a Wire* (1973) and *Berlin Alexanderplatz* (1980).

Fassbinder died on 10 June 1982 at age 37 from a lethal combination of cocaine and barbiturates. Though his career lasted less than two decades, he was extraordinarily productive. Between 1967 and 1982, he completed over forty feature films, twenty-four plays, two television serials, three short films, and four video productions. He won five of Germany's most prestigious feature film awards, including the Golden Bear and multiple German Film Awards. His early death is often seen as marking the end of the New German Cinema period.

Fassbinder was born in the small town of Bad Wörishofen on 31 May 1945, three weeks after the US Army occupied the town and Germany's unconditional surrender. The aftermath of World War II deeply shaped his childhood and his family's life. At his mother's request, Fassbinder later claimed he was born on 31 May 1946, to position himself more clearly as a child of the post-war era; his real birth year was revealed shortly before his death. He was the only child of Liselotte Pempeit (1922–93), a translator, and Helmut Fassbinder, a doctor who worked from the family's apartment on Sendlinger Straße, near Munich's red light district. When he was three months old, his parents sent him to live with a paternal uncle and aunt in the countryside, fearing he would not survive the winter with them. He was returned to his parents in Munich at age one. Fassbinder's mother came from the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), from which many Germans fled after World War II. As a result, several of her relatives came to live with them in Munich.

Fassbinder's parents were cultured members of the bourgeoisie. His father focused on his career, which he saw as a way to fuel his passion for writing poetry. His mother largely ignored him as well, spending most of her time helping her husband with his career. In 1951, Liselotte Pempeit and Helmut Fassbinder divorced. Helmut moved to Cologne, while Liselotte raised her son as a single parent in Munich. To support herself and her child, Pempeit took in boarders and worked as a German-to-English translator. When she was working, she often sent her son to the cinema to pass the time. Later in life, Fassbinder claimed he saw at least one film a day, sometimes as many as four. During this period, Pempeit was frequently away for long stretches while recovering from tuberculosis. In her absence, Fassbinder was cared for by her tenants and friends. Left alone often, he grew used to independence and later became a juvenile delinquent. He clashed with his mother's younger lover, Siegfried, who lived with them when Fassbinder was around eight or nine. He had a similarly difficult relationship with the much older journalist Wolff Eder (c.1905–71), who became his stepfather in 1959. Early in his adolescence, Fassbinder came out as bisexual.

As a teenager, Fassbinder was sent to boarding school. His time there was marked by repeated escape attempts, and he eventually left school without taking final exams. At age fifteen, he moved to Cologne to live with his father. Though they argued constantly, Fassbinder stayed with him for a couple of years while attending night school. To earn money, he worked small jobs and also helped his father, who rented apartments to migrant workers. During this time, Fassbinder began immersing himself in his father's cultural world, writing poems, short plays, and stories.

In 1963, at age eighteen, Fassbinder returned to Munich, planning to attend night school with the goal of eventually studying drama. On his mother's advice, he took acting lessons and from 1964 to 1966 attended the Fridl-Leonhard Studio for actors in Munich. There, he met Hanna Schygulla, who would become one of his most important actors. At age twenty, he made his first 8mm short films, worked as a sound man on student films, and took small acting roles or assistant director positions in theater. During this period, he also wrote the tragicomic play *Drops on Hot Stones*.