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Peter Beauvais (September 9, 1916, in Weißenstadt, Germany – December 17, 1986, in Baden-Baden, Germany) was a German television film director and scriptwriter. As a director for three decades, he helped pioneer and significantly influenced the development of German television.[1]
Beauvais was the son of a factory owner of Jewish origin. He attended the Municipal Liebig High School in Frankfurt am Main, where he studied drama, until 1935. In 1936, under the Nazi regime, he was forced to emigrate to the United States on account of his Jewish background. There he worked as an actor on Broadway. Beauvais returned to Germany in 1945[2] or 1946[3] with the United States Army, for whom worked as an interpreter, including for the Nuremberg Trials, and as a theatre officer.[3]
In 1950 Beauvais became an actor at the theatre in Hanover, then worked as an actor and trainee director at Werner Finck's Kabarett Die Mausefalle (Mousetrap Cabaret) in Stuttgart, and acted in American films produced in Germany. His first television direction work was in 1954, for Südwestfunk (Southwest Radio). In 1958–1960 he directed two theatrical films for UFA. He then moved back to television for good, directing more than 100 television films and episodes from 1960 to 1986. From 1962 to 1967, collaborating with the writer Horst Lommer, Beauvais directed a popular series of films for NDR.[3]
Over the course of his career, Beauvais created a prolific and wide-ranging body of work including comedies, satires, crime films, dramas, and science fiction films. Beauvais adapted for television literary works by writers including Arthur Schnitzler, Anton Chekhov, and Joseph Roth, and directed Eugene O'Neill's Trauer muss Elektra tragen (Mourning Becomes Electra), starring Peter Pasetti. He also adapted and filmed works by contemporary writers including Siegfried Lenz, Karin Struck, Adolf Muschg, and Martin Walser, and original teleplays by writers including Peter Stripp, Daniel Christoff, and Horst Lommer.[2][4]
Beauvais was also an opera director, in Germany and on international stages.[3][2]
Beauvais won two Adolf Grimme Prizes with gold (a prestigious award sometimes called "Germany's Golden Globes"):[5] In 1973 for Im Reservat (In The Reserve) and in 1974 for Sechs Wochen im Leben der Brüder G. (Six Weeks in the Life of the Brothers G.),[3] He also won a posthumous Grimme Prize (with gold) in 1988 for Sommer in Lesmona (Summer in Lesmona) (shared with Reinhard Baumgart, Katja Riemann, and Herbert Grönemeyer),[citation needed] and a Bambi Award, in 1968, for Zug der Zeit (The Locomotive of Time).[4]
Beauvais was married four times, to the actress Ilsemarie Schnering,[4] the singer and actress Karin Hübner[4] (with whom he had a daughter, Dana),[6] the actress Sabine Sinjen (1963 to 1984),[4] and the photographer and later producer Barbara Beauvais.[citation needed] Barbara Beauvais survived him and actually completed his last film Why Is There Salt in the Sea?, as Peter Beauvais died during production.[citation needed]
