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| Formation | 17 May 1946 |
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| Dissolved | 1992 |
| Headquarters | East Berlin |
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DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) was the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) throughout the country's existence.
Since 2019, DEFA's film heritage has been made accessible and licensable on the PROGRESS archive platform. [1]
DEFA was founded in Spring 1946 in the Soviet Occupied Zone in eastern Germany; it was the first film production company in post-World War II Germany. [2] While the other Allies, in their zones of occupation, viewed a rapid revival of a German film industry with suspicion, the Soviets valued the medium as a primary means of re-educating the German populace as it emerged from twelve years of Nazi rule.
Headquartered in Berlin, the company was formally authorized by the Soviet Military Administration to produce films on 13 May 1946, although Wolfgang Staudte had already begun work on DEFA's first film, Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us) nine days earlier. [3] The original board of directors consisted of Alfred Lindemann, Karl Hans Bergmann, and Herbert Volkmann, with Hans Klering as administrative Secretary. Klering, a former graphic designer, also designed DEFA's logo. [4] On 13 August 1946, the company was officially registered as a joint-stock company (German : Aktiengesellschaft). By the end of the year, in addition to the Staudte film, it had completed two other feature films using the former Tobis studio facilities in Berlin and the Althoff Studios in Babelsberg. Subsequently, its principal studio was the Babelsberg Studio built by Ufa in the 1920s.
On 14 July 1947, the company officially moved its headquarters to the Babelsberg Studio, and on 13 November 1947, the company's "stock" was taken over by the Socialist Unity Party or SED, which had originally capitalized DEFA, and pro-Soviet German individuals. Soviets Ilya Trauberg and Aleksandr Wolkenstein joined Lindemann, Bergmann and Volkmann on the board of directors, and a committee was established under the auspices of the Socialist Unity Party to review projects and screen rushes.[ citation needed ]
In July 1948, Lindemann was dismissed from the board of directors because of alleged "financial irregularities" and replaced briefly by Walter Janka. In October 1948, the SED was instrumental in replacing Janka, Volkmann and Bergmann as corporate directors with official party members Wilhelm Meissner, Alexander Lösche and Grete Keilson. In December, the death of Trauberg and the resignation of Wolkenstein resulted in two more Soviets in their stead, Aleksandr Andriyevsky and Leonid Antonov.[ citation needed ]
In 1948, the division of Germany into zones controlled by the Soviet Union and by the Western Allies came into effect. The SED eventually became openly Communist, with a strong Stalinist orientation. On 23 May 1949, the Allies' Germany officially became the Federal Republic of Germany (commonly known as West Germany), and on 7 October 1949, the Soviet zone officially became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). All DEFA interests were incorporated into the new nation as its "people's" film monopoly according to the strictures of Stalinist Communism and socialist realism, and effectively an arm of the government. On 23 June 1950, Sepp Schwab , a hardline Communist, was appointed director-general of DEFA.[ citation needed ]
As socialist realism took hold at DEFA, the definition of desirable and acceptable themes for films became narrower. In June 1947, a film writer's conference held in Potsdam produced general agreement that the "new" German cinema would disavow both subjects and stylistic elements reminiscent of those seen on German screens during, and prior to, the Nazi era. By 1949, expectations for scripts were codified around a small number of topics, such as "[re-]distribution of land" or "the two-year plan". As in the Soviet Union, the excessive control placed by the state on authors of screenplays, as against other literary works, discouraged many competent writers from contributing to East German film. Screenwriters could find their efforts rejected for ideological reasons at any stage in script development, if not from the outset. As a result, between 1948 and 1953, when Stalin died, the entire film output for East Germany, excluding newsreels and non-theatrical educational films, amounted to fewer than 50 titles.[ citation needed ]
In the 1960s, DEFA produced the popular Red Western The Sons of the Great Mother Bear , directed by Josef Mach and starring Gojko Mitić as the Sioux Tokei-itho. [5] This spawned a number of sequels and was notable for inverting Western clichés by portraying the native Americans as the "good guys", and the American army as the "baddies". [6] [ citation needed ]
In 1992, after German reunification, DEFA was officially dissolved and its combined studios sold to a French conglomerate, Compagnie Générale des Eaux, later Vivendi Universal. In 2004, a private consortium acquired the studios. The films produced at the DEFA studios after World War II included approximately 950 feature films, 820 animated films, more than 5,800 documentaries and newsreels, and 4,000 foreign language movies dubbed into German, which were acquired by the privatized version of the former East German film distribution monopoly, PROGRESS. [7] [8]
In October 2005, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City hosted a two-week DEFA festival. [9]
Das Stacheltier is a satirical series of short films that was produced in East Germany by the DEFA Film Studios from 1953 [10] to 1964. [11] The short films were meant to be shown in film theatres preceding the newsreel and the main feature. The only feature film in the series was the silent film Der junge Engländer directed by Gottfried Kolditz in 1958.
Many well-known East German directors and actors contributed to the film series, including Frank Beyer, Erwin Geschonneck, Gisela May, Rudolf Wessely, Otto Tausig, Peter Sturm, Rolf Herricht and Heinz Schubert.
In 2019, Progress was acquired by LOOKSfilm. Since April 1, 2019, the entire film heritage of the GDR has been made internationally accessible and licensable on the Progress Film archive platform. [12]
Babelsberg Film Studio, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg outside Berlin, Germany, is the second oldest large-scale film studio in the world only preceded by the Danish Nordisk Film, producing films since 1912. With a total area of about 460,000 square metres (5,000,000 sq ft) and a studio area of about 25,000 square metres (270,000 sq ft) it is Europe's largest film studio.
Kurt Maetzig was a German film director who had a significant effect on the film industry in East Germany. He was one of the most respected filmmakers of the GDR. After his retirement he lived in Wildkuhl, Mecklenburg, and had three children.
Girls in Gingham —sometimes called Beaverskin—is a 1949 German drama film directed by Kurt Maetzig.
Street Acquaintances is a 1948 German drama film directed by Peter Pewas and starring Gisela Trowe, Alice Treff and Ursula Voß. It was made by the Communist-controlled DEFA studios in the Soviet Zone of Germany Released in both the future West and East Germany it was a popular hit and sold 6,469,626 tickets. While it can be regarded as using a style that resembled the Italian neorealist films of the era, it has also been suggested that it returns to the more traditional style of the Weimar era. It portrays the dangers of spreading venereal disease.
Familie Benthin is an East German film. It was released in 1950.
Der Rat der Götter is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Kurt Maetzig. It was released in 1950.
Anna Susanna is an East German drama film directed by Richard Nicolas. It was released in 1953.
Berlin, Schoenhauser Corner is an East German crime film directed by Gerhard Klein. It was released in 1957.
My Wife Makes Music is an East German musical film directed by Hans Heinrich. It was released in 1958, and sold 6,052,050 tickets. It was shot at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam. The film's set's were designed by the art director Oskar Pietsch.
Maibowle is an East German musical comedy film, released in 1959. It was directed by Günter Reisch.
Divided Heaven is an East German drama film directed by Konrad Wolf. It was released in 1964.
Dr. Ahrendt's Decision is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Frank Vogel. It was released in 1960.
Hans Karl Klering was a German actor, director, voice actor, graphic designer and author. He joined the Communist Party and went into exile in the Soviet Union in 1931, returning to Germany in 1945. In 1946, he became a co-founder of DEFA, the East German state-owned film studio, as well as one of its directors and board members.
Herwig Kipping is a German film director and script writer.
The Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg is the oldest and largest film school in Germany. The university offers undergraduate, graduate, as well as post-graduate studies in all fields of the process of filmmaking. In addition, it is the only art school in Brandenburg, situated together with the Babelsberg Film Studio in Babelsberg.
PROGRESS is a German film distributor. It was established in 1950 to handle the release of films produced by DEFA, the state-controlled production outfit of communist East Germany. Since 1989 Progress distributes the entire DEFA film collection.
Manfred Richter was a German writer, scriptwriter and dramaturg.
Michael Kann is a German film director and actor. He was born in Berlin, East Germany, on 13 January 1950.
Der Augenzeuge was the newsreel in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and was produced by the state film company DEFA. It appeared with a length of 15 minutes from 19 February 1946 to 19 December 1980.
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