Herbert Kirchhoff (born May 5, 1911 in Braunschweig, † September 24, 1988 in Malcesine, Italy) was a German production designer on stage, film and television.
Kirchhoff studied medicine and art history. From 1932 he trained at the Berlin Art Academy. Since 1934 he worked as a production designer at the Städtischen Bühnen in Frankfurt am Main and Düsseldorf as well as at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Five years later, Kirchhoff began studying film architecture at the Deutsche Filmakademie in Potsdam-Babelsberg. In the early 1940s, he continued his activities as a production designer on German stages.
Shortly before the end of World War II he became a film architect. After a brief interruption as a result of the end of the war, where he again designed scenery for stages, Helmut Käutner brought him back to the end of 1946 for the film. Kirchhoff moved to Hamburg, where he then preferred to work for the real-film producers Gyula Trebitsch and Walter Koppel. Kirchhoff designed especially a series of revue films, but also several realistic and timely films. Until 1960, he was also regularly used for productions of Käutner. From 1963 he focused on the design of television productions. There he designed both the designs for opera and operetta productions, as well as for everyday stories and historical documentary games.
In his time in Hamburg Kirchhoff returned again and again to the stage and designed the scenes for staged productions under the direction of Gustaf Gründgens and Rolf Liebermann (Hamburg State Opera). Herbert Kirchhoff, who had retired at the age of 75 years, spent his last period of life on Lake Garda in Italy.
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