I leave it to the reader to solve the mystery hidden therein.

—G.v.R.

INTENDED AS A PREFACE

by the producer Heinz Wohlfahrt

WHEN I hereby release the manuscript of “The Lost Daughter” in printed form, I do so in unimpeachable legality on the basis of the authority vested in me as sole proprietor and CEO of INTERCOSMIC ART FILMS, Vaduz, Principality of Liechtenstein, P.O. Box BX 391, whose executive and sole proprietor I have always been and remain to this day. Thus it is not some shady deal, as has been claimed in certain quarters. It has always been—and up to the present moment still is—my principle to invariably honor obligations my firm has undertaken, even such as are against my better judgment, but also vice versa. I’ve stuck to that in good years and will keep it up in times of crisis too; some may call me crazy, but I was fanatically devoted to the beautiful profession of filmmaking—however, even the gods strive in vain against a wall of opposition.

There have been some hostile comments made about me recently which I here wish to publicly repudiate. I would like to again lay out the facts, one after the other, in chronological order, especially for the gentlemen from a certain newspaper for egghead superstars, a.k.a. intellectuals, who’ve suddenly discovered a supposed genius in Herr Aristides, even though they knew him before without noticing anything of the kind.

Herr Aristides (with a person in his line of work you can never tell if that was his first or his last name or if he really was called something else entirely) was a victim of driving at a speed that even I have to call irresponsible, and I like to drive fast myself. He lost his life in a crash in which no one else was injured, thank God. It was in France, thirty kilometers or so beyond Avignon, on January 13, 1968, between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. precisely. That exact date—probably the only certain one in the life of a man like him—has stuck in my memory so well because it was when the disagreeable arguments began with my French coproducer at the time, arguments that led to a falling-out (which, as far as I personally am concerned, has been flawlessly resolved) and so to the collapse of the Lost Daughter project and thus to the provisional liquidation of INTERCOSMIC ART FILMS, all because of a certain Herr Aristides, today celebrated as a poet by those of his ilk.

In point of fact, at the time of his accident my screenwriter Aristides found himself, under my contractually stipulated directive, en route from Paris to Cannes. Waiting there for him and the completed script for the film The Lost Daughter was a camera-ready crew—everyone from the cameraman to the best boy and the actors under a renown, first-class director—which it was my job as producer to have up and running. I was staying at the Hotel Martinez and punctually at 11:00 p.m., I received a call from the highway patrol advising me of the accident and cause of death. On the spot and still in my tuxedo, I personally set off directly from the bar to the scene of the accident, which—on account of extremely adverse road conditions in what will be remembered as that unusual winter of 1968—I did not reach until 2:00 a.m.