AllMovie

Emilie Altenloh was a film historian and critic who often approached film from a sociological point of view. She is one of the first to examine specific gender differences as they relate to audience perception of films with a particular emphasis on the female view. She was raised in an upper class home in Voerde, Germany. In Heidelburg she studied Business in Law earning a doctorate in 1913; her dissertation, Zur Soziologie des Kino. Die Kino-Unternehmung und die soziale Schicht ihrer Besucher, focused on the sociology of cinema, and was published in 1914. It was the first scholarly work about movies in Germany. In her later years, she abandoned her studies of the cinema and became the director of a provincial welfare agency. Following that she was briefly a Parliamentarian in the German Reichstag. After World War II she worked as a senator in Hamburg.