Marita Böhme was born in Dresden on May 7, 1939. She studied acting at the Ernst Busch Academy for Performing Arts in Berlin from 1958 until 1961. While still a student, she played as a guest at the Volksbühne in Berlin. From 1966 until 1970, Böhme was a member of the Maxim Gorki Theater, where she played the lead in Nora by Henrik Ibsen. 

Ernst Wilhelm Borchert, sometimes billed as Wilhelm Borchert, was born in Berlin on March 13, 1907. Although he began an apprenticeship as a librarian when he was young, he ended up following his passion for acting. He attended the Berlin Reichersche Hochschule für dramatische Kunst (Reicher Academy for Dramatic Art) from 1926-27.

Doris Borkmann was born in Berlin on March 13, 1935. After school, she started an apprenticeship at the DEFA Studio and decided to become an assistant director. In 1956, at only 21 years of age, Borkmann had her first assignment as a second assistant director to Das Traumschiff (dir. Herbert Ballmann).

Director Jürgen Böttcher is also a painter who goes by the pseudonym Strawalde.  He was born on July 8, 1931 in Frankenberg, Saxony and studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1949 to 1953. Because of ideological differences, he was blacklisted and thrown out of the Association for Visual Arts in the fall of 1961.

Kurt Böwe was born in Reetz, Germany, on April 28, 1928. He studied German language, literature and theater at Humboldt University in Berlin from 1950 to 1954, where he then worked as a theater scholar for more than six years. Parallel to this, he participated in the student theater and discovered his passion for acting.

Horst E. Brandt, the German television and movie director, was born in Berlin on January 17, 1923. He grew up in a working class family and apprenticed as a precision mechanic. Brandt began working as an assistant cinematographer at the East German film studios in 1947 at the same time he started an apprenticeship in the film laboratories.

Martin Brandt was born to a Jewish family on May 7, 1903 in Landsberg an der Warthe, Germany (now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland). He began his career in the theater, performing in Bamberg, Stuttgart, and Koblenz in the 1920s, before moving to Berlin in 1933.

Jürgen Brauer was born in Leipzig, Germany, on November 6, 1938. After graduating from high school, he studied physics at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. He attended lectures on scientific photography and, from 1958 to 1962, he studied cinematography at the Deutsche Hochschule für Filmkunst in Potsdam-Babelsberg.

Käthe Braun was born in 1913 in Wasserburg. After taking private acting classes, she got her first engagement with the Bayerisches Staatstheater in Munich in 1935 and then played at theaters in Düsseldorf, Strassburg, and Vienna. After WWII, Braun returned to the theater in Munich, where she met her future husband, director Falk Harnack.

Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Germany, on February 10, 1898. His study of philosophy and medicine at the University of Munich was interrupted by military service during WWI. After the war, he attended Artur Kutscher’s theater seminar and wrote his first play, “Baal” (1918). In 1922, his first play to be performed, “Drums in the Night,” opened in Munich and later at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.