Johann Schwarzer (August 30, 1880–October 10, 1914) was an Austrian photographer and pioneer producer of adult films through his Saturn-Film concern.[1]
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Schwarzer was born in Javornik, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now located in the Czech Republic. In the early 1900s, Schwarzer resettled in Vienna and became a portrait and family photographer and chemist; to supplement his income, Schwarzer began making erotic photos used on naughty postcards common to this era. In 1906, he became acquainted with the existence of men's only nights at movie theaters in Vienna that showed adult films, so-called Herrenabende. Schwarzer organized Saturn-Film that year[2] and began production of such films himself; Saturn-Film was the first native film production company based in Austria.[3] Unlike his predecessors, Schwarzer conducted his business as a public company, advertising in local newspapers, motion picture trade journals and adding a logo to his films like any other European producer. Saturn-Film also published a regular film catalog within its first couple years of existence. Despite this effort, the Saturn-Films often appeared shorn of their logos and rendered anonymously like other, similar subjects once they got further afield of Vienna.
In 1911, Saturn-Film was raided and closed down by the police as a part of a crackdown on erotic materials within Vienna.[4] Schwarzer was an army reservist who was called up with the outbreak of the Great War on July 28, 1914; he had been made a second lieutenant by the time he perished in battle at Wirballen, Poland on October 10 of that year.[5]
While the Saturn-Film product was erotic, it was never pornographic, and this was a conscious decision. In its 1907 catalog, Saturn-Film -- in a text probably written by Schwarzer -- states that "our films are of a purely artistic tendency, and we avoid tasteless subjects in favor of beauty." While to refer to them as "purely artistic" is a bit of an exaggeration, the Saturn-Films were far more professionally made then their French and Argentine counterparts and were the most widely distributed and popular adult films made in the first decade of the twentieth century. Despite the destruction of the main film vault by the authorities in 1911 a surprising number of Saturn-Film's 52 productions survive; roughly half its output still exists in archives throughout Europe. Filmarchiv Austria takes its Schwarzer holdings seriously enough that the first films that they posted to the Europa Film Treasures site were four Saturn-Film titles; Das Sandbad (1906), Baden Verboten (1906), Das Eitle Stubenmädchen (1908) and Beim Fotografen (1908).