Oswald Hafenrichter

Hafenrichter was born to George and Friedericka Hafenrichter in Oplotniz, Duchy of Styria (today Oplotnica, Slovenia). In the first half of the 1920s, he studied medicine in Graz and Vienna then moved to Berlin, where he became an editor at UFA GmbH in 1926.

A member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), Hafenrichter fell under the radar of the Nazi Party in the 1930s, when he was arrested multiple times. He moved to Vienna, where he met the Italian director and producer Carmine Gallone. He worked on his film Al sole (1936) in Austria, and then followed him back to Italy. He stayed in Rome until 1940, when he fled first to France and then the United Kingdom. Allowed in as a communist refugee from the Nazis, he worked for the Ministry of Information editing propaganda films.

He joined Sir Alexander Korda's London Films after the war, when foreigners were again allowed to work in feature films, and also worked for Carol Reed. His post-war films included An Ideal Husband (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949), receiving a nomination for Academy Award for Best Film Editing for the latter at the 23rd Academy Awards.

Hafenrichter then alternated between Italy and England for the rest of his career, which ended in the 1970s with the editing of a series of Hammer horror films.

He married Londoner Edith E. Burbeck in 1948, and had sons Conrard (1949), Stephen (1955), and Roland (1960). He died in Hounslow in May 1973 after a long illness.

• Thank You, Madame (1936)
• Giuseppe Verdi (1938)
• The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950)
• The Lero-Lero Family (1953)
• A Flea on the Scales (1953)
• Lights Out (1953)
• The Smallest Show on Earth (1957)
• Faces in the Dark (1960)
• The Hands of Orlac (1960)
• The Brain (1962)
• Traitor's Gate (1964)
• Danger Route (1967)
• Trog (1970)
• The Creeping Flesh (1973)
• The Vault of Horror (1973)