Ingmar Hoerr: The Curevac founder becomes a film hero

In March 2020, the life of Swabian biotech pioneer Ingmar Hoerr took a turn, the drama of which would not be allowed to pass any feature film script: implausible, exaggerated, overloaded with meaning and symbolism. Great enough that the coronavirus-infested world at that time focused its hope on those molecules in whose medical potential in the years before had hardly anyone so impatiently believed as Hoerr. The fact that the American President would have preferred to bring the Tübingen company Curevac, which Hoerr founded in 1999, to the United States, while the Federal Republic of Germany in turn prepared a 300-million-euro contribution to defend against these advances, requires a lot of imagination. But how likely is it that Hoerr’s sudden rise as a scientist and entrepreneur in this fateful hour should also destroy long-cherished family plans, which in hindsight must seem like the beginning of the end of his marriage, which had previously mastered many difficulties? The idea of letting him suffer a life-threatening brain hemorrhage in the middle of this scratched constellation is finally over. Not to mention the imposition that the marriage breaks up a few years later, just after the wife of the vaccine developer Hoerr of Corona. Which public should take all this at face value? On Wednesday, this story will celebrate its screen premiere at Hofer Filmtage. But not in the feature film program, but in the documentary film program. Because it was the same in March 2020 and in the following years. Ingmar Hoerr spoke openly about all this as soon as his health allowed it again and the excitement about the corona vaccine had settled, which then brought not Curevac from Tübingen on the market, but the eternal competitor Biontech from Mainz. He had never made a secret of his ambitions, his ascent ethos, his love of freedom and his passion for sailing before. How disappointed Hoerr was that in the end it was not he who achieved the great success, but the competition, although it was only a few years after him the possibilities of mRNA vaccines on the track, he prefers not to be noticed until today; But he lacks the acting talent. Hoerr is not a secretary. But directors Marcus Richardt and Lillian Rosa have now approached him in an unexpected way. For this they filmed him on the bunk of the physiotherapist, who demands the recoverer; they were on the sailboat with him, his wife and the twin sons when the family was still intact; They accompanied Hoerr to India, where he has seen something like his spiritual home for years. You can present ample material from the early period of Curevac and from the family albums. In addition, disturbing pictures from the clinic show Hoerr helplessly in the intensive care unit and later in the first trembling walking attempts. These scenes are the strongest in the almost 90-minute film titled “The Healing”. A story of continuing. Viewers learn a lot about the dreams and ideals, including the personal shortcomings of the today 58-year-old hero. An exchange of words that stuck in this relationship: When he had sold his shares in Curevac, Hoerr and some colleagues founded a foundation. It must be the largest of its kind in Europe, he said with a sparkling look. She sees it a little differently, applied his then still married woman soberly, she was especially interested in realism and reliability. The film reveals little about the causes of the commercial success of Biontech and the comparative failure of Hoerr's company Curevac, which has now been taken over by the Mainz and handed over to the processing, including its patents. This is a pity, because there have not been many duels like this in Germany in this decade. The directors Richardt and Rosa are interested in something completely different: they draw a character on which you can work on layers; A conciliatory end included. This is a merit, because there are not many founder biographies in Germany like this.