East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in eastern Germany as part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". Its territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder-Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.
Sigmund Werner Paul Jähn was a German cosmonaut and pilot who in 1978 became the first German to fly into space as part of the Soviet Union's Interkosmos programme.
Unser Sandmännchen, Das Sandmännchen, Der Abendgruß, Abendgruß ("Evening-Greeting"), Der Sandmann, Sandmann ("Sandman"), Sandmännchen is a German children's bedtime television programme using stop motion animation. The puppet was based on the Ole Lukøje character by Hans Christian Andersen.
People's Century is a television documentary series examining the 20th century. It was a joint production of the BBC in the United Kingdom and PBS member station WGBH Boston in the United States. The series was first shown on BBC in the 1995, 1996 and 1997 television seasons before being broadcast in the US and elsewhere in the world in 1998.
Tatort is a German language police procedural television series that has been running continuously since 1970 with some 30 feature-length episodes per year, which makes it the longest-running German TV drama. Developed by the German public-service broadcasting organisation ARD for their channel Das Erste, it is unique in its approach, in that it is jointly produced by all of the organisation's regional members as well as its partnering Austrian and Swiss national public-service broadcasters, whereby every regional station contributes a number of episodes to a common pool.
Rundfunk der DDR was the collective designation for radio broadcasting organized by the State Broadcasting Committee in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until German reunification in 1990.
Jörg Buttgereit is a German writer/director known for his controversial films. He was born in Berlin, Germany, and has lived there his entire life. He is best known for his horror films Nekromantik (1987), Der Todesking (1990), Nekromantik 2 (1991) and Schramm (1993).
Republikflucht was the colloquial term in the German Democratic Republic for illegal emigration to West Germany, West Berlin, and non-Warsaw Pact countries; the official term was Ungesetzlicher Grenzübertritt. Republikflucht applied to both the 3.5 million Germans who migrated legally from the Soviet occupation zone and East Germany before the Berlin Wall was built on 13 August 1961, and the thousands who migrated illegally across the Iron Curtain until 23 December 1989.
DOK Leipzig is a documentary film festival that takes place every year in Leipzig, Germany. It is an international film festival for documentary and animated film founded in 1955 under the name "1st All-German Leipzig Festival of Cultural and Documentary Films" and was the first independent film festival in East Germany. In 1995 a separate competition for animated films was added and in 2004 a film industry program, DOK Industry, was initiated to allow a networking and contact platform for industry professionals. Shortly after German reunification attendance figures dropped, with just 5,500 people coming in 1993; however, they quickly picked up and in 2008 the festival had more than 27,000 attendees. The 2010 International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film ran from 18 until 24 October 2010. DOK Leipzig is part of the Doc Alliance – a creative partnership between 7 key European documentary film festivals.
Life After People is a television series on which scientists, mechanical engineers, and other experts speculate about what might become of Earth if humanity suddenly disappeared. The featured experts also talk about the impact of human absence on the environment and the vestiges of civilization thus left behind. The series was preceded by a two-hour special that aired on January 21, 2008, on the History Channel which served as a de facto pilot for the series that premiered April 21, 2009. The documentary and subsequent series were both narrated by James Lurie.
Bayerischer Fernsehpreis is an award presented by the government of Bavaria, Germany since 1989. The prize symbol is the "Blue Panther", a figure from the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory. The prize money is €10,000.
Deutscher Fernsehfunk was the state television broadcaster in the German Democratic Republic from 1952 to 1991.
Maren Niemeyer is a German journalist, author and documentary filmmaker.
Gunnar Dedio is a German film producer and media entrepreneur. He is the founder and managing director of the film production company LOOKSfilm.
Jürgen Frohriep was a German actor. After 1972 he became widely known for his role as Oberleutnant Jürgen Hübner in Polizeiruf 110, a long running television series that originated in the German Democratic Republic, but which continues to win large television audiences across Germany, following reunification.
LOOKSfilm is a German film production company, based in Leipzig, Berlin, Hanover and Halle (Saale).
Clash of Futures is a documentary drama series by Jan Peter and Gunnar Dedio. The series is the continuation of 14 - Diaries of the Great War (2014) and tells the personal stories of thirteen people from all over Europe during the interwar period. The series was part of the eponymous project Clash of Futures. In addition to the series, the project included a theatrical and a radio piece, a book, various Europe-wide special exhibitions and a social media campaign. In the anniversary year of the end of the First World War, the eight-part series first aired September 11, 2018 on Arte.
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 was a pivotal event in world history which marked the falling of the Iron Curtain and the start of the fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe. The fall of the inner German border took place shortly afterwards. An end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit three weeks later and the German reunification took place in October the following year.
Alfred Müller was a German stage and screen actor. His career peaked in the German Democratic Republic during the 1960s and 1970s, but he was still making frequent appearances – increasingly, by this time, on the small screen – in film dramas through the 1980s. He was 63 when the wall came down and, unlike many performers who had built their careers in East Germany (1949–1989), he successfully transitioned in reunified Germany, continuing to appear in stage musicals and television dramas long after his seventieth birthday. As a result of his starring role in the 1963 East German espionage film For Eyes Only he was burdened, over many decades, with the labels, the "James Bond of the East" and "007 of the East": he detested the epithets.
