He was born in what is now Glen Ridge, New Jersey,[1] which was then part of the now-neighboring town of Bloomfield. He was the son of Count Leopold Filip Kolowrat-Krakowsky [cs] (1852–1910) and his wife Nadine Freiin von Huppmann-Valbella (1858–1942), the daughter of a successful cigarette manufacturer from Saint Petersburg. He had three siblings: Bertha, Friedrich and Heinrich.
The reason "Sascha" Kolowrat-Krakowsky was born in the US is described in a letter of March 30, 1984, from his nephew Count Colloredo-Mansfeld to the Austrian film scholar Walter Fritz:
Due to a supposed or actual 'defamation' of his bride, my grandfather [Leopold] shot his adversary, a Prince of Auersperg, in a duel, which had to be atoned for by an exile of several years, according to the customs of that time. This Old Austrian, very Schnitzler-like drama could have provided his son [Sascha] with a good film subject.[2]
After the death of his father in 1910 and the inheritance of his estates in Bohemia, Alexander Kolowrat founded the Sascha-Film factory and a film laboratory at his castle Groß Meierhöfen (today Velké Dvorce) in Pfraumberg (Přimda). In 1912, he moved to Vienna and founded the Sascha-Filmfabrik on Pappenheimgasse 2/Treustraße in Brigittenau. One of his first productions with Sascha-Film was the documentary Die Gewinnung des Erzes am steirischen Erzberg in Eisenerz ("The Ore Mining in the Styrian Erzberg in Eisenerz"). In 1915, he took over the film branch of the k.u.k. Kriegspressequartier (War Media Quarters) in Vienna and also produced several propaganda movies during World War I.
Historic photo of the Kolowrat memorial on the area of the former Wien-Film studio, in Vienna-Sievering, which was removed in 2021
Kolowrat-Krakowsky worked with many actors, e.g. the then-obscure Marlene Dietrich and Willi Forst, who both performed in the 1927 silent film Café Elektric directed by Gustav Ucicky. He did important pioneering work in all film genres of the time. The high points of his artistic work were the productions of monumental silent movies like Sodom and Gomorrah (1922) or Die Sklavenkönigin (1924), both directed by Michael Curtiz, on the Laaer Berg in Vienna-Favoriten. In 1916, he erected Austria's first huge studio in Vienna-Sievering. Together with his Sascha-Film company, he was the owner of several cinemas. He personally loved to attend the Münstedt Cinema in the Prater park, as well as the Burgkino and the Opernkino. In the Vienna Prater, west of the Rotunde, he erected "Old London" in 1920 for film shots, similar to the "Venice in Vienna" theme park nearby, but smaller.
Kolowrat died of cancer in 1927 in Vienna, aged 41. He would be referenced in the hit Dietrich-von Sternberg film collaboration Dishonored (1931), in which Marlene Dietrich plays a spy whose civilian name is Marie Kolowrat.
Filmography
Die Gewinnung des Eisens am steirischen Erzberg in Eisenerz (1912)
