Paul Hatschek

Paul Hatschek (1888 to 1944) was a Czech engineer who specialised in optical and film technology and worked in Berlin. He was granted a Canadian patent for a projection apparatus in July 1926 and an American patent for an optical projection apparatus in January 1928, for which he had filed in 1923. From 1931 he published articles on sound film technology in German technical journals, and his books on the subject, including Grundlagen des Tonfilms, were reprinted and translated, some of them after his death. He collaborated with Manfred von Ardenne and worked for the Tobis film company in Berlin as a patent engineer. By 1939 he had joined the German resistance group known as the European Union, and the Gestapo arrested him in September 1943. Hatschek was sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof and executed at Brandenburg-Görden Prison on 15 May 1944; his wife and daughter were also executed.