Claus von Stauffenberg was a German army officer who is best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
The 20 July plot was a failed attempt to assassinate the German dictator Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime on 20 July 1944. The plotters were part of the German resistance, mainly composed of Wehrmacht officers.
Klaus Wowereit is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and was the Governing Mayor of Berlin from 21 October 2001 to 11 December 2014. In 2001 state elections his party won a plurality of the votes, 29.7%. He served as President of the Bundesrat in 2001/02. His SPD-led coalition was re-elected in the 2006 elections; after the 2011 elections the SPD's coalition partner changed from the Left to the Christian Democratic Union. He was also sometimes mentioned as a possible SPD candidate for the Chancellorship of Germany (Kanzlerkandidatur), but that never materialized.
Frank Paul Beyer was a German film director. In East Germany he was one of the most important film directors, working for the state film monopoly DEFA and directed films that dealt mostly with the Nazi era and contemporary East Germany. His film Trace of Stones was banned for 20 years in 1966 by the ruling SED. His 1975 film Jacob the Liar was the only East German film ever nominated for an Academy Award. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 until his death he mostly directed television films.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in Germany rank among the highest in the world and have evolved significantly over the course of the last decades. During the 1920s and the early 1930s, lesbian and gay people in Berlin were generally tolerated by society and many bars and clubs specifically pertaining to gay men were opened. Although same-sex sexual activity between men was already made illegal under Paragraph 175 by the German Empire in 1871, Nazi Germany extended these laws during World War II, which resulted in the persecution and deaths of thousands of homosexual citizens. The Nazi extensions were repealed in 1960 and same-sex sexual activity between men was decriminalized in both East and West Germany in 1968 and 1969, respectively.
Friedrich Olbricht was a German general during World War II and one of the plotters involved in the 20 July Plot, an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. He was a senior staff officer, with the rank of lieutenant general. He was secretly in contact with most of the leaders of the resistance. They briefed him on their various plots and he placed sympathetic officers in key positions. He quietly encouraged field commanders to support the resistance. By late 1943 his office was the centre of Resistance plotting, under Claus von Stauffenberg. Had the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler been successful, he would have assumed the position of Minister of Finance in a post-Nazi regime.
The Bendlerblock is a building complex in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany, located on Stauffenbergstraße. Erected in 1914 as headquarters of several Imperial German Navy offices, it served the Ministry of the Reichswehr after World War I. Significantly enlarged under Nazi rule, it was used by several departments of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) from 1938, especially the Oberkommando des Heeres and the Abwehr intelligence agency.
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.
Valkyrie is a 2008 historical political war thriller film directed by Bryan Singer, written by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, starring Tom Cruise. The film is set in Nazi Germany during World War II and depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan to take control of the country. The film was released by American studio United Artists and stars Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the key plotters. The supporting cast includes Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard, Terence Stamp, and Tom Wilkinson.
Coming Out is a 1989 East German film directed by Heiner Carow and written by Wolfram Witt which deals with the lead character, a high school teacher, "coming out" and accepting himself as gay. It was the last East German film released to the public prior to the German reunification and one of the last films made by DEFA, the East German state film studio, and the only gay-themed feature film that it made.
The Kino International is a film theater in Berlin, built from 1961 to 1963. It is located on Karl-Marx-Allee in former East Berlin. It hosted premieres of the DEFA film studios until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today it is a protected historic building and one of the venues of the annual Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).
Eva-Maria Hagen was a German actress and singer. She was known as the "Brigitte Bardot of the GDR" but was banned from performance for political reasons.
Jaecki Schwarz is a German actor. With around 120 film and television roles throughout his career, he worked prolifically with DEFA, the East German state-owned film studio, as well as Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF), the state television broadcaster in the GDR. Since the reunification of Germany, he has been known for his roles in the long-running detective television series Polizeiruf 110 as well as the crime series Ein starkes Team.
Albert Hetterle was a German actor who also became intendant at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.
Carsten Johannes Marcus Hübner is a German actor. He appeared in more than eighty films since 2003, including Magical Mystery or: The Return of Karl Schmidt and The Good Neighbour. Also known on TV for Transporter, Polizeiruf 110, crime series Post Mortem in 2007/2008.
Dirk Kummer is a German actor, director, and screenwriter. He is best known for directing movies Sugar Sand (2017), Wohin mit den Witwen (1999) and Rosenzweig's Freedom (1998).
Die andere Liebe is a 1988 East German public education documentary film directed by Axel Otten and Helmut Kißling. It is 34 minutes long and in German with English subtitles. It was the first film produced by East Germany's state-run DEFA film studios that dealt with the subject of homosexuality. It was commissioned by the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden. It was made in co-operation with gay and lesbian activists in East Germany and includes interviews with lesbians and gay men talking about their lives. The film was aiming to convey official state acceptance of homosexuality.
Peter Becker is an Anglo-German actor. He was born in 1979 in Bad Hersfeld to a German father and a British mother and was raised between Germany and the UK. Becker had his first role as a theatre actor at 15 years old at the renowned Bad Hersfelder Festspiele.
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.
Hakan Savaş Mican is a German-Turkish filmmaker, playwright and director.
