DEFA Memories

Personal recollections about working at the DEFA Film Studios can be found in a range of volumes published in German, including in autobiographies such as director Frank Beyer’s Wenn der Wind sich dreht: Meine Filme, mein Leben or Iris Gusner’s Fantasie und Arbeit: Biografische Zwiesprache, which she co-authored with the West German director Helke Sander. Unfortunately, very little of this type of information is currently available in English. In the process of creating bonus features for DVD releases and organizing educational events at UMass Amherst and elsewhere, the DEFA Film Library has had the opportunity to generate or translate a number of interviews with and texts by filmmakers. From time to time, we also gather texts on a particular topic or event. 

Under the rubric DEFA Memories, we are pleased to make a range of English-language texts available to teachers and researchers:
Filmmaker Interviews
• Texts by DEFA Filmmakers
’89-'09: We Remember – Memories of 9 November 1989: the fall of the Wall
Reel Stories about WENDE Flicks – A series with supplementary pieces related to the WENDE Flicks series.

Andreas Voigt and Gerd Kroske: On Leipzig in the Fall

It was different with cinema. There was less censorship and more freedom. Here, life in this little country of the GDR – its everyday, its life stories and fates – were more often the center of attention . . . .

Andreas Voigt: Night of Nights… November 9, 1989

I was in the middle of possibly the most exciting shoot of my life. We had been filming the Monday demonstrations on the streets of Leipzig...

Babelsberg's Last 35mm Print

When director Helke Misselwitz and film-conservation expert Harald Brandes arrived at Babelsberg Postproduction on July 27, 2009 to approve the new print of Herzsprung, they learned that the facility was closing—–after almost 100 years in service...

Christel Gräf (dramaturg): The Tragedy of an Indecisive Person

Certainly, we tried to tell an enthralling story and chose the narrative structure of a crime genre, although you cannot describe this film as a crime movie in a conventional sense ...

Christine Becker: We Didn’t Understand—Memories of November 9th

There was nothing to smuggle that day. Other than the usual groceries, cheese, fruit and a TV magazine, we had nothing in our luggage...

Claus Löser: My November 9, 1989

Our hangout was one of those East Berlin corner pubs that gave you the feeling that nothing had changed in the last hundred years...

Detlef Humboldt: Actually, I Wanted to Go to Bed Early...

I was living in Prenzlauer Berg at the time. I was home by myself for the first time in days...

Dieter Wolf: Our Own James Bond

DEFA dramaturg Dieter Wolf remembers the production of For Eyes Only — Top Secret, the film that became an East German box office hit in 1963 . . . .

Ear to the Wall: Rock in Late 1980s East Germany

The DEFA documentary whisper & SHOUT (Dir: Dieter Schumann, 1988) is the only official documentary ever made about the East German rock scene before the Wall came down...

Eduard Schreiber: The Eye Swims on the Canal Grande

At first sight, this is a dump in northern Berlin: a place where you unload household items, state and status symbols, love letters, military uniforms, an accordion. It is fall 1989...

Evelyn Schmidt: The Days Before and After

I had marked the date in my calendar: November 4, 1989. Everybody knew about the call put out by artists, Neues Forum and other organizations—the call to demonstrate for democracy...

Gerd Kroske: On the Making of La Villette

I came to my film La Villette like “Hans in Luck” in the fairy tale. It was late fall 1989 . . . .

Heiner Carow: In Search of Today’s Stories, in conversation with Erika and Rolf Richter

 In the scenario, there was the scene with a gay man, and someone said, as long as there is a gay character, why not do a real story? This made sense to us . . . .

Heinz Kersten on The Mistake

Heinz Kersten was one of the few West German critics who focused on East German theater and cinema, making his a rare cultural voice from across the Wall...

Helke Misselwitz: My November 9th

I was at Mount Holyoke College in [South Hadley], Massachusetts. Film editor Gudrun Plenert, director of photography Thomas Plenert and I, as director, had been on tour with Winter Adé...

Helke Misselwitz: On Herzsprung and Filmmaking during the Wende

I had had no choice but to work as a documentary director, as I was not allowed to make feature films . . . .

Helmut Dziuba: Working with Lay Actors in Jana und Jan

There were different kinds of juvenile detention centers in the GDR: open vs closed, single gender vs mixed . . .  The guys and girls in the detention centers were no saints . . .

Hertha Thiele: At the Hairdresser’s with Brecht and Dudow

From 1928 until 1931, I worked at the Schauspielhaus in Leipzig. I had also starred in Girls in Uniform, which had not yet premiered. Brecht and Dudow were preparing to make Kuhle Wampe and were looking for a new face for the role of Anni . . . .

Herwig Kipping: An Act of Love

I wanted to consciously search for the beginning. What do I believe in? Why did I say yes? Why did I join the Party? Why was I thrown out? That’s what I wanted to find out . . . .

Iris Gusner: An Interview about All My Girls

In the 1960s, when I studied at VGIK, an ideological “thaw” in the Soviet Union was taking place, which had been initiated by Nikita Krushchev. It was a time of upheaval and re-evaluation . . . .

Iris Gusner: Interview by historian Ralf Schenk

I experienced the first manned launch into outer space while studying in Moscow, along with all the excitement that accompanied it. At that point my interest in the cosmos . . . .

Joachim Herz: The Cinematic Composition of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman

We assume the same fiction in film that we see on the music theatre stage. The fiction implies that the work has not yet been composed and that orchestral musicians skilled in improvisation receive their impetus from the actions and reactions of the performers . . .

Joachim Herz: The Image Emerges from the Music

The opera Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) does not tell a saga, nor is its substance a saga; rather, it talks about people who tell a saga . . .

Jörg Foth: Director of Latest from the Da-Da-R

The differences between television and DEFA had to do with the fact that television was a part of the state apparatus that was primarily responsible for propaganda, while DEFA was a state-owned enterprise ... which met its annual production plan more like a business . . .

Jörg Foth: Womp-bomp-a-loom-op-a-womp-bam-boom

On the phone, Thomas Plenert asked me, “Hi Jörg. What’s happening?” He sounded as if he were just around the corner, but he was calling from the USA, where he was on tour...

Kurt Maetzig: A New Train on Old Tracks (On Founding the DEFA Studio)

In the immediate postwar period, our thoughts about the Ufa Studio were based on what we had seen in movie theaters during the War. We wanted to clearly distinguish the newly-founded  DEFA Studio from the Ufa tradition . . . 

Laila Stieler: Writing about Daily Life

I had a lot of fear and a lot of luck. After I finished my studies in 1990, I worked for a year as a dramaturg at Deutsche Fernsehfunk (DFF), the former East German television station. It was a one-year grace period... 

Rainer Simon: When the Wall Came Down

That evening I had an old friend over, an astrophysicist I had known for many years. He was a world-renowned expert in solar physics. Despite this, the East German higher-ups did not allow him to travel to the West...

Ralf Schenk: Coming Out on the 9th

A very special invitation was sitting on my desk: an invitation for the premiere of Coming Out, the first East German gay film, to be held on November 9, 1989...

Roland Gräf: In Keeping with the Need for Truthful Stories

It was not the idea from the beginning for Mein lieber Robinson (My Dear Robinson). It emerged unexpectedly shortly after we started shooting . . . .

Siegfried Kühn with dramaturg Dieter Wolf: The Transformations of an Actress

Our conversation is a little tricky. The last scenes for The Actress have been shot, the film is edited and the mix is done. Nothing more can be changed at this point . . . .

Stefan Kolditz: Burning Life - A Recollection

Caution! In your hand is a film that was rated “extremely dangerous” at its 1994 premiere in Germany. But before you panic, let me start from the beginning . . . 

Stefan Kolditz: Comrade Schabowski Said So

“You can believe it! Comrade Schabowski said so. Ask Comrade Schabowski!" The couple—in their late 50s, stocky, typical Berliners—stood at the infamous Palace of Tears...

Strawalde / Böttcher – Painter / Filmmaker

For me, the only good painting is one that includes a secret.  - Strawalde

The Land Beyond the Rainbow

Herwig Kipping was born in 1948 in Meyen and studied first mathematics, then film in Babelsberg. He was considered early on an unusual talent but also something of an enfant terrible at DEFA...

The Multi-Talented Christian Steyer

Christian Steyer became famous in 1970s East Germany as a heartthrob on the silver screen...

Thomas Knauf: Finding the Good in the Bad

There is no need to come up with a heroic story about the fall of the Wall. Such a story exists very personally in the heads of all crew members...

Thomas Wilkening: It’s a Long Fall

First the group had the neutral name “Nachwuchs” [Younger Generation]. But when our first DEFA-film, Latest from the Da-Da-R) by Jörg Foth, premiered in October 1990, we found the name a little silly – Jörg, for one, was already 41 years old – and we agreed quickly on DaDaeR . . . .

Ulrich Weiß: Looking at Miraculi with the Distance of Time

At the end of the 1970s, a lake disappeared in East Germany. And with the lake vanished all working equipment over night, including an excavator...

Ulrich Weiß: The Third Way, or There’s Also a Spot between the Chairs

One of them read aloud from the notes he had taken in the dark. Halfway through it I laughed, and they were shocked . . . .

Ulrich Weiß: WHAT NEXT?

Still, I can’t manage to render a STATEMENT on the fall of the Berlin Wall. HOW COULD I? Was it a turning point that led to German unity? Or to re-unification? Was it a revolution, a peaceful one?...

’72, ’82, ’92 – Irm Hermann, an Interview by Jörg Foth

In the early 1970s, we in our dorm, out in the sticks in Babelsberg, devoured everything by Fassbinder that was broadcast. In Warsaw, Prague and Budapest we spent whole days at the cinema...

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