Rigid social realism and strict censorship resulted in many more bans of films than in other countries of the Socialist bloc and it is therefore quite surprising that East German films and directors managed to achieve such heights




In 1990, at the first Berlin Film Festival after the fall of the wall that divided the city, great attention was given to East German films. In the past four and a half decades that have passed since WW II, unlike Polish, Czech, Hungarian or Soviet films, they rarely managed to attract the interest of international film critics and other festivals. However, in 1990, the films from DR Germany, a state that was falling apart, were represented in the main program with Coming by Heiner Carow, which caused a scandal in East Germany with its topic of homosexuality but won the Silver Bear in Berlin, the short animated diploma-winning Die Panne by Klaus Georgi and Lutz Stützner and Spur der Steine by Frank Beyer, which was banned in 1966 and did not compete in the official competition program because the author won the Berlinale Kamera recognition for his contribution to film art. Nevertheless, the FIPRESCI jury (international association of film critics) awarded this film with a special diploma. Besides, East German films were also shown in several accompanying programs; the most interesting of them were included in the Forum and showed films that have been banned in the last twenty-five years.

Since this program includes films by Beyer, Carow and Konrad Wolf, probably the most important authors of the exceptionally creative generation that established itself in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it will be immediately noticeable why East German cinema did not manage to reach the continuity of success for which it undoubtedly had enough creative and technical potential. It was in this territory of the Soviet occupation zone (which in 1949 became The German Democratic Republic) that the techniques of big production houses Tobis and UFA (which merged into the new and powerful production house DEFA) were preserved. In 1946, based on ideas of allied military leaders’ about de-nazification, Wolfgang Staudte (during Nazism he was an actor and later a director of light films) successfully directed the impressive drama Die Mörder sind unter uns, and later, primarily based on criticism of the Nazi past, and successfully continued his directing career (mostly in West Germany).

In East German cinema, anti-Nazi films were quite common and often very honest and of high-quality. However, the same authors who received recognition for their films with topics from a not-so-distant past had problems with films that covered contemporary topics. Carow lasted forty years as a DEFA employee and began his career directing a few children’s films with anti-Nazi messages. Nevertheless, this did not help him to avoid problems with films under the control of extremely dogmatic politicians. Even his partially autobiographical film about a fifteen year old at the end of WW II Die Russen kommen was banned in 1968 due to insufficiently emphasized attitudes of the Party (or maybe due to unpleasant associations of the film’s title at the time of the intervention in the Czech Republic). In 1971, the film was shown in its edited version under the title Karriere, and the original as late as 1987. Carow earned his credit though as the author of the film Legende von Paul und Paula (1973), the most popular film of all time in East Germany (three million viewers in a country of 16 million), even though that love melodrama also had political problems because of the insufficient “political immaturity” of its protagonists.

Rigid social realism and strict censorship resulted in many more bans of films than in other countries of the Socialist bloc. Censorship did not even shy from films by authors who received international recognition, such as Konrad Wolf whose Sterne won the Jury’s award in Cannes in 1959, or Frank Beyer whose Jakob der Lügner (1974) was the only East German film to be nominated for an Oscar. Beyer was supposed to make that film in 1966, but after his Spur der Steine had been banned, for years he was allowed to work only in theater. Even the successful comeback of probably the most important East German author did not last long because his next film, Das Versteck (1977), was banned and he was forbidden to direct in his home country for a few years. Therefore, for some years he worked on TV productions in West Germany. Considering such conditions, it is surprising that East German films and directors managed to achieve such heights while having to find ways to avoid problems with censorship and politics.

After he saw the American remake of his film Jacob the Liar (1999) starring Robin Williams, Beyer was asked what he thought about it. In his answer, he pointed out the differences of the Hollywood and East German production and said, somewhat ironically: “We had censors and they have sponsors”. (Tomislav Kurelec)