Quick Facts
Biography
Kay Weniger (born 1966, in Berlin) is an Austrian writer of books on media issues. He published an eight-volume encyclopedia on international film people.
Biography
Weniger is the youngest son of the German stage and film actress Sigrid Roth and the Austrian stage actor Hans Weniger. They left Berlin for Hamburg when he was one year old. Weniger studied history of art, history and archaeology at the Hamburg University and gained his doctorate with a thesis: Wiederaufbau- und Neubauplanung in Hamburg 1945 bis 1950. Städtebauliche Kontinuität oder Wandel?.
Career
Subsequently he worked as an editor for several German newspapers, including Die Welt in Bonn and Welt am Sonntag in Hamburg. Primarily active in the travel department he soon focused on media issues and wrote a huge number of articles on film and film people.
In 2001 he published the eight-volume encyclopedia "Das grosse Personenlexikon des Films". It contains more than 6100 biographies of all kind of men and women active in international film business.
In 2008 he published another reference book, "Zwischen Bühne und Baracke". It contains some 500 biographies on people in theatre, film and music business that suffered under National Socialist persecution and terror in Europe between 1933 and 1945.
Works
- 'Es wird im Leben dir mehr genommen als gegeben ...' Lexikon der aus Deutschland und Österreich emigrierten Filmschaffenden 1933 bis 1945: Eine Gesamtübersicht. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8.
- Das große Personenlexikon des Films. Die Schauspieler, Regisseure, Kameraleute, Produzenten, Komponisten, Drehbuchautoren, Filmarchitekten, Ausstatter, Kostümbildner, Cutter, Tontechniker, Maskenbildner und Special Effects Designer des 20. Jahrhunderts. 8 Bände. Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3.
- Zwischen Bühne und Baracke. Lexikon der verfolgten Theater-, Film- und Musikkünstler 1933 bis 1945. Mit einem Geleitwort von Paul Spiegel. Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9.