The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit, was the state security service of East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
Dame Vanessa Redgrave is an English actress. Throughout her career spanning over six decades, Redgrave has garnered numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards, making her one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. She has also received various honorary awards, including the BAFTA Fellowship Award, the Golden Lion Honorary Award, and an induction into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Erich Fritz Emil Mielke was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The Peaceful Revolution, as a part of the Revolutions of 1989, was the process of sociopolitical change that led to the opening of East Germany's borders with the West, the end of the ruling of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic in 1989 and the transition to a parliamentary democracy, which later enabled the reunification of Germany in October 1990. This happened through non-violent initiatives and demonstrations. This period of change is referred to in German as Die Wende.
Downfall is a 2004 historical war drama film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel from a screenplay by its producer, Bernd Eichinger. It is set during the Battle of Berlin in World War II, when Nazi Germany is on the verge of defeat, and depicts the final days of Adolf Hitler. The cast includes Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler, Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel, Alexander Held, Matthias Habich, and Thomas Kretschmann. The film is a German-Austrian-Italian co-production.
East German jokes, jibes popular in the former German Democratic Republic, reflected the concerns of East German citizens and residents between 1949 and 1990. Jokes frequently targeted political figures, such as Socialist Party General Secretary Erich Honecker or State Security Minister Erich Mielke, who headed the Stasi secret police. Elements of daily life, such as economic scarcity, relations between the GDR and the Soviet Union, or Cold War rival, the United States, were also common. There were also ethnic jokes, highlighting differences of language or culture between Saxony and Central Germany.
Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler was a German journalist, communist propagandist and host of the television show Der schwarze Kanal from 1960 to 1989.
Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in 1948 when it operated from a former cinema in Goldsmith Street. Directors during this period included Val May and Frank Dunlop. The current building opened in 1963.
Rona Munro is a Scottish writer. She has written plays for theatre, radio, and television. Her film work includes Ken Loach's Ladybird, Ladybird (1994), Oranges and Sunshine (2010) for Jim Loach and Aimée & Jaguar (1999), co-authored by German director Max Färberböck. Munro is the second cousin of Scottish author Angus MacVicar.
Anna Funder is an Australian author. She is the author of Stasiland, All That I Am, the novella The Girl With the Dogs and, about George Orwell's first wife, Wifedom.
Friedrich Hans Ulrich Mühe was a German film, television and theatre actor. He played the role of Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler in the Oscar-winning film Das Leben der Anderen, for which he received the gold award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, at the Deutscher Filmpreis ; and the Best Actor Award at the 2006 European Film Awards.
DV8 Physical Theatre was a physical theatre company based at Artsadmin in London, United Kingdom. It was officially founded in 1986 by Lloyd Newson (1986–2015), Michelle Richecoeur (1986–1988) and Nigel Charnock. Lloyd Newson led the company as choreographer and artistic director from its inception, apart from the production My Sex, Our Dance (1986), which was co-created and performed with Nigel Charnock. DV8 officially ended in April 2022 when Lloyd Newson announced his retirement via the company web page.
The Lives of Others is a 2006 German drama film written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck marking his feature film directorial debut. The plot is about the monitoring of East Berlin residents by agents of the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. It stars Ulrich Mühe as Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler, Ulrich Tukur as his superior Anton Grubitz, Sebastian Koch as the playwright Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as Dreyman's lover, a prominent actress named Christa-Maria Sieland.
The Klaus Renft Combo is a veteran German rock band, formed in Leipzig in what was then East Germany, in 1958. Founded by Klaus Renft, the band enjoyed significant success in East Germany until banned by the authorities in 1975. The band was reunited in 1990.
Edda Carin Wilhelmine Göring was the only child of German politician, military leader, and leading member of the Nazi Party Hermann Göring, by his second marriage to the German actress Emmy Sonnemann.
Giles MacDonogh is a British writer, historian and translator.
All That I Am is Australian writer Anna Funder's first fictional work, published in 2011. It follows characters affected by the Nazi regime in pre-war Germany and Britain.
David John Young is an English novelist whose crime thriller series featuring a fictional Volkspolizei detective, Karin Müller, is set in 1970s East Germany. Young's debut novel Stasi Child won the 2016 CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger for the best historical crime novel of the year. Both it and the follow-up, Stasi Wolf, were longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016 and 2017 respectively. In 2017, Bonnier Zaffre, the UK adult fiction division of the Bonnier Group, announced Young had signed a six-figure deal for three further novels in the series, making five in all, with the third, A Darker State, being published in February 2018. Young says the inspiration for the series came after his indie pop band The Candy Twins toured Germany in 2007 and he read Anna Funder's non-fiction book Stasiland between gigs. He secured the tour thanks to favourable comments made by Edwyn Collins about a tribute song Young wrote about him. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Young was a news producer and editor for more than 25 years with BBC World Service radio and BBC World TV.
Deutschland 89 is a German television series, starring Jonas Nay as Martin Rauch, an agent of East Germany following the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It is a sequel to the 2015 series Deutschland 83, and 2018 series Deutschland 86, and premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 25 September 2020.
Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990 is a 2023 history book about East Germany written by German historian Katja Hoyer. Hoyer was born in what was then East Germany in 1985, but had lived in the UK for several years prior to the book's release.
