10 great East German films

Over the last few years, boutique Blu-ray distributors in both Britain and the United States have shone a spotlight on the curious national cinema of a nation that no longer exists: East Germany or, to use its official name, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). 

In the UK, Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series will soon release its latest curated collection of East German cinema, Into the Forest: Folktales at DEFA. The box explores Märchenfilme – or, in other words, fantastical adaptations of popular folk and fairytales by the likes of the Brothers Grimm – and includes The Singing Ringing Tree (1957), an infamously weird and wonderful example of the genre filled with truly horrifying imagery. Earlier this year, the American label Deaf Crocodile released its own Märchenfilme set, DEFA Fairy Tales.

The ‘DEFA’ in both titles refers to Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (‘German Film Company’), which was established 80 years ago in May 1946 in what was then the Soviet occupation zone of post-war Germany. It had already been producing films for over three years when the socialist GDR was officially formed in October 1949. Thereafter, it became a state-operated film studio until German reunification in 1990, following the fall of the Berlin Wall the previous year. The company was officially dissolved in 1992.

While state ideology played a significant role in shaping the kinds of films DEFA produced, East German cinema encompasses a much wider range of films than is often imagined – from realist dramas to popular genre films and everything in between (to the extent that the restrictions of a 10-film list mean that DEFA’s rich traditions of animation and documentary filmmaking are sadly not represented here). With international home video releases making East German cinema increasingly accessible, we review 10 films that are ripe for rediscovery 80 years on from the founding of DEFA.

Director: Wolfgang Staudte

One of the best East German films is the first. The quintessential Trümmerfilm (‘rubble film’), The Murderers Are Among Us was shot in the ruins of Berlin in the immediate aftermath of World War II and deals with the literal and figurative wreckage it had left behind. It begins as Susanne Wallner (Hildegard Knef) returns from a concentration camp to find her old apartment occupied by Dr Hans Mertens (Ernst Wilhelm Borchert), a former Wehrmacht soldier. The two gradually form an uneasy friendship, though it is clear from the outset that Mertens is haunted by his wartime experiences, and he spirals further after an encounter with what was once his superior officer, Ferdinand Brückner (Arno Paulsen). 

Balancing noirish expressionism with stark realism, The Murderers Are Among Us is a surprisingly frank confrontation of the horrors in Germany’s immediate past. Director Wolfgang Staudte was refused permission to make the film in the British, French and American occupation zones before the Russian authorities threw their support behind it, leading to the founding of DEFA and the production of several further rubble films in the Soviet sector, including Gerhard Lamprecht’s equally affecting Somewhere in Berlin (1946).

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Directed by Paul Verhoeven (not that one), this colourful fantasy is DEFA’s first fairytale adaptation and one of the most popular films ever produced in the GDR. Designed to retool Germany’s longstanding folktale tradition for socialist purposes, it was adapted from Wilhelm Hauff’s folktale ‘The Cold Heart’ and follows a charcoal maker named Peter (Lutz Moik), who ventures into the Black Forest to strike a Faustian bargain with the nefarious Holländer-Michel (Erwin Geschonneck). A supernatural being with immense power, Holländer-Michel promises Peter fame, fortune and the love of the beautiful Lisbeth (Hanna Rucker), if only he will exchange his beating heart for a replacement made of stone. 

Shot on Agfacolor stock salvaged by Soviet forces following the war, Heart of Stone is a magical and macabre fable that plays like a socialist Powell and Pressburger. Its enormous success paved the way for dozens of further Märchenfilme produced into the 1980s – including The Singing Ringing Tree and The Tinderbox (1959), both of which were seen by a generation of (generally terrified) British children when they played on the BBC as part of its Tales from Europe series.

Director: Kurt Maetzig

DEFA was more interested in some genres than others, and produced only a handful of science-fiction films. Its first, The Silent Star, is the most interesting. Adapted from an early novel by Stanisław Lem (best known as the author of 1961’s Solaris), it follows the crew of the starship Kosmokrator as they investigate a mysterious communication unearthed in the Gobi desert and determined to have originated on Venus. 

Its reputation has suffered due to an English-dubbed release under the title First Spaceship on Venus, but it boasts some truly jaw-dropping production design and an international, multi-racial cast in a film that pre-dates Star Trek by six years. In a purposeful subversion of 1950s sci-fi tropes, it is effectively an alien invasion story without the invasion – one that makes an earnest plea for global cooperation and non-violent conflict resolution. The later Eolomea (1972) is also excellent but far less hopeful, as a group of socialists go in search of a utopia in the stars that they have been unable to build on Earth.

Director: Joachim Kunert

There are several East German productions that might be characterised as film noir – including The Murderers Are Among Us, but also Police Raid (1947), The Blum Affair (1948), Crime Scene: Berlin (1958), The Gleiwitz Case (1961) and Chronicle of a Murder (1964) to name but a few others. The Second Track probably has the strongest claim to the label. Filled with knowing references to Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), including the title, a catchy musical leitmotif and long takes in which characters walk towards (or away from) a stationary camera, it revolves around the mystery of why a train station inspector, Walter Brock (Albert Hetterle), refuses to identify a criminal he caught redhanded in the process of stealing from a freight car (Walter Richter-Reinick). 

Following an investigation narrative that deftly manipulates the viewer’s identification with both characters, the answer to that question is eventually provided in a genuinely harrowing flashback sequence – one that examines the culpability of all Germans, including civilians, in the appalling atrocities that occurred under the Nazi regime.

Director: Joachim Herz

The closest thing to an East German horror film, The Flying Dutchman is an adaptation of the 1843 opera of the same name by composer Richard Wagner, itself inspired by a legendary ghost ship said to sail the high seas and spell doom for any crew unlucky enough to see it. Experimental and surreal, it focuses on a young woman named Senta (Anna Prucnal), who is obsessed with the story of the Flying Dutchman and, in her fantasies, is visited by its ghostly captain (Fred Düren). 

While the film is faithfully presented as an opera (dialogue is sung, not spoken), it features some truly unsettling imagery, and Erich Gusko’s expressionistic cinematography is clearly designed to evoke the horror films of his fellow countrymen F. W. Murnau, Paul Leni and Karl Freund. To circumvent DEFA’s general aversion to supernatural themes (outside of Märchenfilme that is), director Joachim Herz deploys an innovative shift in aspect ratio to differentiate between the real world and Senta’s fantasies. Herz was first and foremost an opera director; it’s a shame that he didn’t make more feature films.

Director: Josef Mach

A German western might seem like an odd prospect, but the country actually made its first westerns in the silent period – and by the mid-1960s they were being made on both sides of the Berlin Wall. In West Germany, The Treasure of Silver Lake (1962) initiated a popular and long-running series of films based on the works of author Karl May, largely revolving around the frontiersman Old Shatterhand and the noble Apache chief Winnetou. 

East Germany dispensed with a white lead altogether, casting the Serbian actor Gojko Mitić in a series of its own westerns (or ‘Indianerfilme’ as they were then known in the GDR) focused on Native American protagonists. The first, The Sons of Great Bear, established a recurring formula: Mitić plays the Dakota warrior Tokei-Ihto, who must defend his people against Red Fox (Jiří Vršťala), a ruthless mercenary who wants to steal gold from tribal lands. Unrivalled in domestic popularity by any genre other than fairytale films, westerns were produced in East Germany into the mid-1980s; a particularly interesting later example is Blood Brothers (1975), in which Mitić stars opposite the musician Dean Reed, nicknamed the ‘Red Elvis’.

Director: Konrad Wolf

Konrad Wolf, son of the diplomat Friedrich Wolf and brother to Stasi spymaster Markus Wolf, is often considered one of the finest filmmakers to work in the GDR. A committed socialist raised in the Soviet Union, he made a series of acclaimed pictures at DEFA between the mid-1950s and his death in 1982, from his Holocaust films Stars (1959) and Professor Mamlock (1961) to the acclaimed drama Solo Sunny (1980), which screened in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival. 

I Was Nineteen is his masterpiece. The semi-autobiographical story of a German citizen who returns to his homeland as a soldier in the Red Army, it explores the experiences of German socialists who fled to the Soviet Union in order to escape Nazi persecution, only to return as strangers after the fall of the Third Reich. The film’s protagonist, Gregor Hecker (Jaecki Schwarz), is forced to bear witness to the horrifying evidence of Nazi war crimes and consider what it means to be German in their wake. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Volker Schlöndorff – director of The Tin Drum (1979) – considers Wolf’s film to be the best produced in East Germany.

Director: Joachim Hasler

As The Silent Star and The Sons of Great Bear illustrate, DEFA was not afraid to produce its own takes on commercial genres. Made in the age of Elvis movies, Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday (1963) and, above all, AIP’s Beach Party (1963) and its sequels, Hot Summer is the East German answer to the teen musical. Here, two groups of teenagers meet on their way to Rügen, an island on the Baltic Sea and popular holiday destination for citizens of the GDR. The groups are led by Stupsi and Kai, respectively played by the popular East German musicians Chris Doerk and Frank Schöbel, a real-world couple who would share the screen again in the far less entertaining Don’t Cheat, Darling! (1973). 

The two groups initially don’t like each other very much, but through the power of collectivism (and some extremely catchy tunes), they learn to get on in the end. If ever there was proof that life and culture in the socialist bloc was not quite as grey and joyless as the Western media liked to suggest, Hot Summer is it.

Director: Frank Beyer

Frank Beyer directed two films that could easily have made it on to this list. The first is Trace of Stones (1966), a film about personal and professional conflicts on a worksite that was banned for its apparently anti-socialist themes. The second is the tragicomic Jakob the Liar, the only East German film to ever be nominated for an Academy Award. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Jewish author Jurek Becker and loosely based on his father’s experiences in the Łódź ghetto, it is set in Nazi-occupied Poland and tells the story of Jakob Heym (Vlastimil Brodský), who claims to possess a contraband radio in order to falsely report on the advance of Allied forces and bring hope to his increasingly hopeless community. 

DEFA began making films about the Holocaust immediately after the war, an early example being Marriage in the Shadows (1947). Jakob the Liar, though, is one of the most powerful Holocaust films ever made – in East Germany or anywhere else. Ultimately, it lost the competition for Best Foreign Language Film at the 49th Academy Awards to Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Black and White in Color (1976).

Director: Heiner Carow

A newcomer to East German cinema might be surprised to discover just how progressive many DEFA films are. This is especially true of the studio’s later productions and particularly Coming Out, in which high-school teacher Philipp Klarmann (Matthias Freihof) struggles with his sexual identity. After meeting – and falling in love with – Matthias (Dirk Kummer) while exploring the gay scene in East Berlin, he finds the strength to come out to his partner Tanja (Dagmar Manzel) and ultimately accept himself as a gay man. 

Heiner Carow is better known as the director of The Legend of Paul and Paula (1973), a uniquely weird romantic comedy that was enormously popular upon release, enjoyed a revival as part of the 1990s ‘Ostalgie’ movement driven by nostalgia for aspects of life in the GDR, and is considered a bonafide cult classic in contemporary Germany. Coming Out is Carow’s more important and accomplished film, though. A landmark in the history of queer cinema, it premiered on the same night the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 before going on to win a Silver Bear and a Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1990.