In an "archival" age of 90 years, highly honoured, Prof. Dr. Ludwig Gesek from Vienna died on January 26, 1994.

In the 60s and 70s we met him regularly in FIAF congresses. We saw him less after his retirement from the Österreichisches Filmarchiv. Maybe some of our younger members of the FIAF family have never heard his name.

Prof. Dr. Gesek started his film career - as many of the pioneers of the film archive movement - in the early thirties. On behalf of the Union of Nations and its International Film Institute he organised in 1932 in Vienna an international conference on "Youth and Cinema". Two years later he became co-founder of an Austrian Institute for Film culture. He worked as film critic for radio and newspapers. In 1947 he started the review "Filmkunst".

On his concept and initiative, the Österreichisches Filmarchiv was founded in 1955. He chaired this institution for nearly 25 years. He brought a new element into the archive movement: his close relationship to film science. He shared the view of a film archive as a more academic, scientific institution.

Prof. Dr. Gesek organised the international weeks for film science which made Vienna in the sixties a well known meeting place for film historians and researchers from East and West.

Thank to the passion of Prof. Dr. Gesek the awareness for film preservation found a wider and more public attention in Austria. In 1966 he succeeded in getting the necessary funds for the construction of a new archive depot at Laxemburg near Vienna.

He had a long and successful life, a life for film culture and filmarchivism. We owe him thanks for his contribution to FIAF. We will remember him as one of the pioneers of the international film archive movement.

Wolfgang Klaue