This is a list of the most notable films produced in Germany of the Weimar Republic era from 1919 until 1932, in year order. This period, between the end of World War I and the advent of the Nazi regime, is considered an early renaissance in world cinema, with many influential and important films being made. The style of many of these films is called German Expressionism.
For an alphabetical list of articles on Weimar German films see Category:Films of the Weimar Republic.
The film industry in Germany can be traced back to the late 19th century. German cinema made major technical and artistic contributions to early film, broadcasting and television technology. Babelsberg became a household synonym for the early 20th century film industry in Europe, similar to Hollywood later. Early German and German-speaking filmmakers and actors heavily contributed to early Hollywood.
The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was a historical period of Germany from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic. The period's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar, which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the republic was usually simply called "Germany", with "Weimar Republic" not commonly used until the 1930s. The Weimar Republic had a semi-presidential system.
Weimar culture was the emergence of the arts and sciences that happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic, the latter during that part of the interwar period between Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 and Hitler's rise to power in 1933. 1920s Berlin was at the hectic center of the Weimar culture. Although not part of the Weimar Republic, some authors also include the German-speaking Austria, and particularly Vienna, as part of Weimar culture.
Weimar is a city in the German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, 80 km (50 mi) southwest of Leipzig, 170 km (106 mi) north of Nuremberg and 170 km (106 mi) west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouring cities of Erfurt and Jena, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia, with approximately 500,000 inhabitants. The city itself has a population of 65,000. Weimar is well known because of its cultural heritage and importance in German history.
The New Objectivity was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, who used it as the title of an art exhibition staged in 1925 to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit. As these artists—who included Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter and Jeanne Mammen—rejected the self-involvement and romantic longings of the expressionists, Weimar intellectuals in general made a call to arms for public collaboration, engagement, and rejection of romantic idealism.
In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period (interbellum) lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II (WWII). It was relatively short, yet featured many social, political, military, and economic changes throughout the world. Petroleum-based energy production and associated mechanisation led to the prosperous Roaring Twenties, a time of social and economic mobility for the middle class. Automobiles, electric lighting, radio, and more became common among populations in the first world. The era's indulgences were followed by the Great Depression, an unprecedented worldwide economic downturn that severely damaged many of the world's largest economies.
German expressionist cinema was a part of several related creative movements in Germany in the early 20th century that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in Northwestern European culture in fields such as architecture, dance, painting, sculpture and cinema.
The Golden Twenties was a particular vibrant period in the history of Berlin. After the Greater Berlin Act, the city became the third largest municipality in the world and experienced its heyday as a major world city. It was known for its leadership roles in science, the humanities, art, music, film, architecture, higher education, government, diplomacy and industries.
The Golden Twenties, also known as the Happy Twenties, was a five-year time period within the decade of the 1920s in Germany. The era began in 1924, after the end of the hyperinflation following World War I, and ended with the Wall Street crash of 1929.
Cinema of Europe refers to the film industries and films produced in the continent of Europe. The history of Italian cinema began a few months after the French Lumière brothers, who made the first public screening of a film on 28 December 1895, an event considered the birth of cinema, began motion picture exhibitions. The history of cinema in Germany can be traced back to the years of the medium's birth. Ottomar Anschütz held the first showing of life sized pictures in motion on 25 November 1894 at the Postfuhramt in Berlin. On 1 November 1895, Max Skladanowsky and his brother Emil demonstrated their self-invented film projector, the Bioscop, at the Wintergarten music hall in Berlin. A 15-minute series of eight short films were shown – the first screening of films to a paying audience.The first Italian director is considered to be Vittorio Calcina, a collaborator of the Lumière Brothers, who filmed Pope Leo XIII in 1896. The Lumière brothers established the Cinematograph; which initiated the silent film era, a period where European cinema was a major commercial success. It remained so until the art-hostile environment of World War II. These notable discoveries provide a glimpse of the power of early European cinema and its long-lasting influence on cinema today.
Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, was a German dramatist.
Joe May was an Austrian film director and film producer and one of the pioneers of German cinema.
The Golem: How He Came into the World is a 1920 German silent horror film and a leading example of early German Expressionism. Director Paul Wegener, who co-directed the film with Carl Boese and co-wrote the script with Henrik Galeen based on Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel, stars as the titular creature, a being in Jewish folklore created from clay. Photographer Karl Freund went on to work on the 1930s classic Universal horror films years later in Hollywood.
This is a list of the most notable films produced in German cinema.
Reactionary modernism is a term first coined by Jeffrey Herf in the 1980s to describe the mixture of "great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy" that was characteristic of the German Conservative Revolutionary movement and Nazism. In turn, this ideology of reactionary modernism was closely linked to the original, positive view of the Sonderweg, which saw Germany as the great Central European power, neither of the West nor of the East.
Manfred Noa was a German film director. Noa was described by Vilma Bánky, who he directed twice, as her "favourite director". Noa's 1924 film Helena has been called his "masterpiece" although it was so expensive that it seriously damaged the finances of Bavaria Film.
Gustav Botz was a German actor.
Prussian films were a cycle of historical films made in Germany during the Weimar (1918–1933) and Nazi (1933–1945) eras noted for their general glorification of Prussian history and its military. The films are set during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They particularly focused on Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786 greatly expanding its territory. The films were extremely popular with German audiences and an estimated forty four were produced by the end of the Second World War.
New Objectivity was an art movement that emerged in Germany in the early 1920s as a counter to expressionism. The term applies to a number of artistic forms, including film.
Alice Ludwig was a German film editor who worked on many films and television series between 1932 and 1973. After first entering the film industry during the Weimar Republic, she worked continuously during the Nazi era. Following the Second World War she edited Marriage in the Shadows (1947), an anti-Nazi work of the rubble film period. Much of her later film work was in popular melodramas such as Gabriela (1950). From the 1960s onwards she switched to working in television, her final employment being the editing over fifty episodes of the crime series Hamburg Transit.
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