He was especially closely associated throughout his career with director Josef von Baky, who employed Haentzschel on many of his movies during the 1940s and 1950s.
He died during an earthquake.
Haentzschel's most famous film score, for the wartime extravaganza Münchhausen (1943) recalls his mentor Theo Mackeben. The score is flooded with romantic melody and effective scoring.
Haentzschel studied at the Stern Conservatoire in Berlin and made a career which eventually left him as the last remaining representative composer from what he considered the golden age of German film music.
In 1993, Capriccio Records issued a CD of new recordings of some of Haentzschel's best-known and most-beloved film music.
Haentzschel's film work came to a halt at the end of the Hitler era, and he didn't score another movie until 1949.
He directed the Deutsche Tanz-und-Unterhaltungsorchester (German Dance and Light Music Orchestra).
He worked equally happily as a jazz pianist, regularly collaborating with the similarly gifted Peter Igelhoff.
During his early twenties, at the end of the 1920s, made his living as a pianist and arranger in various dance orchestras, and for the Berlin Radio Hour.
After the war, he moved to West Germany and worked in Cologne.
Representative work may be heard in many other film scores, such as Via Mala (released 1948), Annelie (1941) and Robinson soll nicht sterben.