Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant (1925)

In our continuing series of Henny Porten film specials, EFSP presents the German silent film Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant/The Adventures of Sybil Brent (Carl Froehlich, 1925). It was again a Henny Porten-Froehlich-Produktion, starring Porten and Italian film star Memo Benassi. In this post we focus on the studio where the film was produced.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 32/1. Photo: A. Schmoll, Berlin / Henny Porten-Froehlich-Produktion. Henny Porten in Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant/The Adventures of Sybil Brent (Carl Froehlich, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 32/2. Photo: A. Schmoll, Berlin / Henny Porten-Froehlich-Produktion. Henny Porten in Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant/The Adventures of Sybil Brent (Carl Froehlich, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 32/3. Photo: A. Schmoll, Berlin / Henny Porten-Froehlich-Produktion. Henny Porten in Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant/The Adventures of Sybil Brent (Carl Froehlich, 1925).

The Zoo-Atelier studio

Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant aka Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brandt was filmed at the Zoo-Atelier film studio in the Hardenbergstraße in Berlin. Zoo-Atelier was founded in 1919 and was situated in former exhibition halls, transformed into a studio by the furniture manufacturer Markiewicz.

As the Cinegraph Lexicon mentions, among its first clients was Goron-Films, for which Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau staged the films Der Januskopf/Love's Mockery (1920) with Conrad Veidt, and Der Gang in der Nacht/Journey Into the Night (1921) with Olaf Fonss, Conrad Veidt and Erna Morena, at the Zoo-Atelier (and the Cserépy-Atelier in Leipziger Strasse).

From 1921 the studio was rented by the Europäische Film-Allianz (E.F.A.) GmbH, run by film producers Paul Davidson (formerly PAGU), Carl Bratz, and Adolf Zukor (Famous Players-Lasky). They soon turned it into one of the best equipped and most favoured studios of the early 1920s in Europe.

In the following years, several famous films by German directors were shot at the Zoo-Atelier: Ernst Lubitsch's Das Weib des Pharao/The Wife of the Pharaoh (1920) and Die Flamme/The Flame (1922), Richard Oswald's Carlos und Elisabeth/Carlos and Elisabeth (1923/24), Joe May's Tragödie der Liebe/Tragedy of Love (1922/1923, also at the May-Atelier) and Nju (Paul Czinner, 1924, also at Staaken), Peter Paul Felner's Der Kaufmann von Venedig/The Merchant of Venice (1923) and Das goldene Kalb/The Golden Calf (1924).

Carl Froelich filmed here the dramas Mutter und Kind/Mother and Child (1924) and Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant/The Adventures of Sybil Brent (1925), both starring Henny Porten. Their Henny Porten-Froelich Produktion was one of the regular clients of the studio.

When Zukor backed out of the studio in 1924, E.F.A. was overtaken by Cob-Film. The following year, when the rental contract with Zoo-Atelier expired, the company built its own EFA-Atelier at Cicerostraße. And that was the end of the Zoo-Atelier.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 32/4. Photo: A. Schmoll, Berlin / Henny Porten-Froehlich-Produktion. Henny Porten in Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant/The Adventures of Sybil Brent (Carl Froehlich, 1925). The man could be A.E. Licho, who plays a theatre director.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 32/5. Photo: A. Schmoll, Berlin / Henny Porten-Froehlich-Produktion. Henny Porten in Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant/The Adventures of Sybil Brent (Carl Froehlich, 1925). The man could be Rudolf Biebrach, who played Sibylle's father in the film.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 32/6. Photo: A. Schmoll, Berlin / Henny Porten-Froehlich-Produktion. Henny Porten and Memo Benassi in Das Abenteuer der Sibylle Brant/The Adventures of Sybil Brent (Carl Froehlich, 1925).

Source: Cinegraph (German), Wikipedia and IMDb.