14 Facts About Oskar Messter

Oskar Messter was a German inventor and film tycoon in the early years of cinema.

Oskar Messter was born on November 21,1866, in Berlin, where his father had founded in 1859 a company called Optisches und Mechanisches Institut Ed.

That being the case, on June 15,1896, Oskar Messter sold his first device.

Also in 1896, Oskar Messter rented a small theater that had gone bankrupt and inaugurated the second cinema hall in Berlin, since the first one was opened by the envoys of the Lumiere brothers that precise year.

Subsequently, Oskar Messter debuted at the Apollo, a Berlin variety theater, and organized a film projection service.

Also at the end of 1896, Oskar Messter entered the business of film production, creating his first films, such as A Skater at the West Railway Station and At the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin.

In 1916, Oskar Messter founded with the director of cinema Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky, the Wiener Sascha-Messter Film GmbH, Viennese daughter of the Messter-Film GmbH.

However, at the end of the First World War, Oskar Messter sold his companies in Berlin and Vienna to the newly founded Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft.

Oskar Messter donated his collection of historical film equipment to the German Museum in 1932.

Oskar Messter was characterized for having an innovative mentality that he knew how to apply to the exploration of the new medium of cinematography, whether for scientific purposes or for commercial purposes.

From 1896, Oskar Messter was interested in the search of a method of reproduction and synchronization of the sound effects of the cinematographic performance at the time of the "silent movies".

Until 1907 the Tonbilder branch of the German film industry was dominated by Oskar Messter, who had reached the following agreement with Leon Gaumont that Gaumont would not supply Phonoscenes to Germany and Messter would not provide Tonbilder biophons to France, and that their respective devices would be sold by a joint consortium called Gaumont-Messter-Chronophone-Biophon.

Oskar Messter's Tonbilders sold well while he kept his technical superiority over other film producers in Germany.

Between 1903 and 1910, Oskar Messter produced the first successful and popular series of silent films, including:.