The passionate one

This man is crazy! Crazy about films and everything that is somehow connected to them. In this case, even for everything that is connected to what is connected to – namely for everything that has to do with the seventh art.

As soon as you enter Paul Lesch's house, you are so overwhelmed by the sheer mass of posters, photos, figures and books that you have to hold on to something. In this case – as you have already guessed, dear reader – it is of course the old cinema chairs that decorate the entrance area of his bungalow in Itzig. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment we forgot to ask from which cinema he got the chairs.

Paradise for cinephiles

People with no affinity for the arts, who have nothing to do with books and cinema, might even describe the film historian's passion for collecting as, well … a little crazy. For book lovers in general and cinephiles in particular, however, Lesch's four walls are a true paradise. When we jokingly suggested to the landlord that we would voluntarily let ourselves be locked up here during the next Covid-19-related quarantine, we were only half joking.

In any case, Paul Lesch, whom we visited at the beginning of the month, is in the best of moods and already has something to say about every photo, every poster, every figure, every autograph card when we are greeted in the hallway; indeed, he has a suitable anecdote ready for almost every object, so that it takes us several minutes to reach the living room, which in this case is more like a study crammed with books, more books and even more books.