DEFA

DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft)

Company type	State-owned enterprise (historical)
Industry	Film production
Founded	1946
Founder	Alfred Lindemann, Karl Hans Bergmann, Herbert Volkmann, Hans Klering
Defunct	1992
Fate	Disbanded after German reunification; studios sold to private companies
Successor	None
Headquarters	Berlin (later relocated to Potsdam-Babelsberg) , East Germany (German Democratic Republic)
Area served	East Germany (German Democratic Republic)
Key people	Alfred Lindemann, Walter Janka, Wilhelm Meissner, others
Products	Feature films, animated works, documentaries, newsreels, dubbed foreign films
Owner	Socialist Unity Party (SED) (from 1947), East German government

DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) functioned as the state-owned film production company of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) throughout its entire existence. Since 2019, DEFA’s extensive film collection has been available for licensing and viewing via the PROGRESS archive platform. The DEFA Foundation, operating as a non-profit entity, is responsible for maintaining DEFA’s film archives and studio facilities, ensuring public access to these cultural assets.

History

Established in the spring of 1946 within the Soviet Occupied Zone of Germany, DEFA was the inaugural film production company founded in post-World War II Germany. While other Allied powers were hesitant about restarting German cinema, Soviet authorities viewed film as an essential medium for re-educating the population following the Nazi regime.

Based in Berlin, DEFA received official authorization from the Soviet Military Administration on 13 May 1946 to begin film production. Nine days earlier, Wolfgang Staudte had commenced work on DEFA’s debut film, Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us). The founding board consisted of Alfred Lindemann, Karl Hans Bergmann, Herbert Volkmann, and Hans Klering, who served as administrative Secretary and also designed DEFA’s emblem. On 13 August 1946, DEFA was formally registered as a joint-stock company (). By the end of that year, it had completed three feature films utilizing former Tobis and Althoff Studios facilities in Berlin. Its principal studio was the historic Babelsberg Studio, originally constructed by Ufa during the 1920s.

On 14 July 1947, DEFA relocated its headquarters to Babelsberg Studio. Later that year, on 13 November, ownership of the company’s shares shifted to the Socialist Unity Party (SED), which had initially financed DEFA alongside pro-Soviet German collaborators. Soviet representatives Ilya Trauberg and Aleksandr Wolkenstein joined Lindemann, Bergmann, and Volkmann on the board; meanwhile, a committee under SED oversight was established to review projects and monitor rushes.

In July 1948, Lindemann was removed due to accusations of "financial irregularities" and was temporarily succeeded by Walter Janka. By October of the same year, Janka along with Volkmann and Bergmann were replaced by SED members Wilhelm Meissner, , and Grete Keilson. Following Trauberg’s passing and Wolkenstein’s resignation in December, Soviets Aleksandr Andriyevsky and Leonid Antonov joined the board.

The formal division of Germany into Soviet and Western sectors took place in 1948. The SED embraced a stringent Stalinist Communist ideology. On 23 May 1949, West Germany was established as the Federal Republic of Germany, while on 7 October 1949 the Soviet zone was declared the German Democratic Republic. Control over DEFA and its holdings transferred to East Germany’s government. On 23 June 1950, staunch Communist was appointed as DEFA’s director-general.

Under socialist realism directives, permissible film subjects became highly restricted. At a June 1947 writers’ conference in Potsdam it was agreed that new German cinema should reject themes and styles linked to Nazi-era productions. By 1949, screenplays were expected to focus on subjects such as land reform or economic development plans. State supervision over scripts led many writers to be discouraged; scripts could be rejected at any point due to ideological reasons. As a result, between 1948 and Stalin’s death in 1953 fewer than fifty feature films were produced in East Germany excluding newsreels and educational films.

During the 1960s, DEFA created the popular Red Western The Sons of the Great Mother Bear, directed by Josef Mach and featuring Gojko Mitić portraying Sioux leader Tokei-itho. This film led to sequels that subverted conventional Western tropes by depicting Native Americans as protagonists while casting the U.S. military as antagonists.

Following German reunification in 1992, DEFA was disbanded; its studios were sold to French corporation Compagnie Générale des Eaux, later known as Vivendi Universal. In 2004 a private consortium acquired these assets. Over its postwar history, DEFA produced approximately 950 feature films, more than 820 animated works, upwards of 5,800 documentaries and newsreels, plus some 4,000 foreign-language movies dubbed into German—all catalogued under PROGRESS following privatization.

In October 2005, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art organized a two-week festival dedicated to DEFA films.

Das Stacheltier

Das Stacheltier represents a series of satirical short films created by DEFA Film Studios in East Germany between 1953 and 1964. These brief productions were typically shown in theaters prior to news segments and feature presentations. The sole full-length movie within this series was the silent film Der junge Engländer (1958), directed by Gottfried Kolditz.

Notable East German filmmakers and performers associated with the series include Frank Beyer, Erwin Geschonneck, Gisela May, Rudolf Wessely, Otto Tausig, Peter Sturm, Rolf Herricht, and Heinz Schubert.

In 2019, LOOKSfilm acquired Progress, enabling worldwide access and licensing of the entire GDR cinematic archive through the Progress Film archive platform.

DEFA Film studios

• DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme located in Potsdam-Babelsberg (feature film production)
• DEFA-Studio für Trickfilme based in Dresden (animation)
• DEFA-Studio für populärwissenschaftliche Filme in Potsdam, Alt-Nowawes (educational content)
• DEFA-Studio für Wochenschau und Dokumentarfilme situated in Berlin (newsreels and documentary films)
• DEFA-Studio für Synchronisation in Berlin-Johannisthal (dubbing services)
• DEFA-Kopierwerke facilities in Berlin-Köpenick and Berlin-Johannisthal (film duplication)
• DEFA-Außenhandel office in Berlin (foreign trade operations)

DEFA Foundation

Founded on 15 December 1998 by the Federal Government of Germany, the DEFA Foundation is a non-profit entity committed to safeguarding DEFA’s film collection and the former East German studios as integral parts of Germany’s cultural heritage. It oversees approximately 700 feature films, 450 short narrative films, 950 animated works, 2,000 documentaries, 2,500 serial productions, and 6,700 foreign films dubbed into German, alongside related materials such as posters and manuscripts. Since 2012, digitization of its holdings has been a primary focus.

In 2013, the foundation introduced the Heiner Carow Prize, awarded to outstanding young German filmmakers during the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival.

See also

• Babelsberg Studio
• Broadcasting in East Germany
• Culture of East Germany
• DEFA Film Library, housed at University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
• List of East German films
• Ostern
• PROGRESS

Bibliography

• Allan, Sean; Sandford, John (eds.) DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946–1992. Berghahn Books, 1999
• Allan, Sean; Heiduschke, Sebastian (eds.) Re-Imagining DEFA: East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts. Berghahn Books, 2016
• Bergfelder, Tim; Carter, Erica; Goektuerk, Deniz (eds.) The German Cinema Book. BFI/University of California Press, 2003
• Berghahn, Daniela. Hollywood behind the Wall: the Cinema of East Germany. Manchester University Press, 2005
• Beyer, Frank. Wenn der Wind sich dreht: Meine Filme, mein Leben. Econ Verlag, 2001
• Elsaesser, Thomas; Wedel, Michael. The BFI Companion to German Cinema. British Film Institute, 1999
• Habel, F.-B. Das grosse Lexikon der DEFA-Spielfilme. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 2000
• Heiduschke, Sebastian. East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
• Naughton, Leonie. That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification, and the ‘New’ Germany. University of Michigan Press, 2002
• Preuss, Evelyn. "'You Say You Want a Revolution': East German Film at the Crossroads between the Cinemas." In Celluloid Revolt: German Screen Cultures and the Long 1968, Boydell & Brewer, 2019
• Schenk, Ralf; Richter, Erika (eds.) apropos: Film 2001 Das Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung. Das Neue Berlin Verlag, 2001
• Schittly, Dagmar. Zwischen Regie und Regime: die Filmpolitik der SED im Spiegel der DEFA-Produktionen. Berlin Verlag, 2002
• Silberman, Marc; Wrage, Henning (eds.) DEFA at the Crossroads of East German and International Film Culture. A Companion. De Gruyter, 2014
• Wagner, Brigitta B. (ed.) DEFA after East Germany. Camden House Publishers, 2014

Film

• East Side Story, a documentary focusing on the musicals produced by DEFA

External links

• DEFA Film Library and Online Store
• DEFA Foundation
• PROGRESS, distributor responsible for the entire DEFA film catalog
• Studio Babelsberg