Trivia

After the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, he and his family were forced to flee to the Soviet Union, because they were Polish Jews.

Despite his plans to emigrate to the United States, he founded his production company Central Cinema Company (CCC) in Berlin in 1946.

He produced over 20 films about the Holocaust, including the 'Best Foreign Language Film' Academy Award winner The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) and the 'Best Foreign Language Film' Golden Globe winner Europa Europa (1990).

One of the most successful and best-known film producers in Germany.

Brother of Wolf Brauner.

Uncle of Sharon Brauner.

Father of Alice Brauner.

In 1965 he fired the director Franz Josef Gottlieb, then at work in Spain on the Karl May film Wild Kurdistan (1965; Durchs wilde Kurdistan), for budgetary overreach. A notoriously tough negotiating partner, Brauner tried to pay the film's lead, Lex Barker, for one film after the American actor had appeared in two in close succession that were both related to May's stories. Barker took him to court, and Brauner had to pay up.

In 2010, Yad Vashem opened a media center in Brauner's name. Brauner called it the "crowning achievement of my film career".

Always taking a two-track approach to filmmaking, Brauner produced both the kind of light entertainment films he himself described as "tra la la" and prizewinning dramas and films dealing with the Nazi dictatorship.

Brauner said that he never interfered with a director's work unless there were clear shortcomings in the product. But he was also businessman enough to pull the plug if the budget ceiling was breached.

After the war, Brauner and his brother moved to Berlin where he made a career balancing popular films that earned him money and the critically acclaimed films he was more passionate about.

He persuaded Romy Schneider to star in The Passerby (1982; La passante du Sans-Souci). It would be the famous actor's last film; no one could have known that she would die in May 1982, soon after the premiere.

He was able to lure iconic director Fritz Lang back to Germany from Hollywood for a revival of the film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, the movie that had made Brauner fall in love with cinema as a young man.

Brauner was able to survive the Holocaust by fleeing to the Soviet Union with his parents and four siblings in 1939. Twelve of his relatives were killed during the massacres by German forces at Babi Yar in Ukraine, a series of killings he would eventually produce a film about in 2003.

Brauner was a prominent member of the Jewish community of Berlin and a recipient of the Bundesverdienstkreuz.

At the 2003 Berlinale, he was awarded the Berlinale Kamera honouring his lifetime achievement.

He produced more than 300 films from 1946.

In 2009, Yad Vashem received a donation of 21 of Brauner's productions having to do with the Holocaust, including Die Weiße Rose, The Plot to Assassinate Hitler (Der 20. Juli) and Man and Beast (Mensch und Bestie).

In 2013 he won the honorary pin of the Society of Christian-Jewish cooperation.