14 August 2012 – It is with great sadness that we have to announce the loss of Ronny Loewy, who died at the age of only 66 on 9 August 2012.

For 30 years, Ronny proved an invaluable asset to the work of the Municipal Cinema, the Deutsches Filmmuseum as well as the Deutsches Filminstitut in Frankfurt. As rediscoverer of Yiddish Cinema and high-profiled exhibition curator, he did not only help to build the first permanent exhibition of the Deutsches Filmmuseum in the 1980s, but also gave new impulses to the Exile Studies through his exhibition “From Babelsberg to Hollywood”. As co-founder of the working group on the Cinematography of the Holocaust and internationally renowned film historian, he led annual international conferences in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna and Budapest. For the Deutsches Filminstitut and the Fritz-Bauer-Institut Ronny developed the database “Cinematography of the Holocaust” in the mid 1990s, one of the most important online resources on the Shoah and Film. In the past few years he was the dedicated convenor of  the European Standard for Cinematographic Works for enhancing the exchange of information about film. He was also editor and author of many of our publications.

Ronny was always curious, open-minded and approachable. Lively, intelligent and considerate in his judgement, he was a politically-thinking intellectual, who loved life and the exchange of views and ideas with others. He did not only make our daily lives richer but also the ones of everybody he met at so many conferences, film festivals and similar events. He cherished and maintained long-term friendships resulting from these encounters. We, too, have not only lost one of the internationally most profound experts on film exile and moving image documents on the Holocaust, but also a very good friend.

We miss Ronny painfully already now, and we will not forget him.

Claudia Dillmann and all colleagues of the Deutsches Filminstitut and Museum