Film director Kurt Maetzig was one of the co-founders of the GDR film company DEFA. He became internationally known with "Ehe im Schatten". He died at Röbel in 2012 at the age of 101.
Director and DEFA co-founder Kurt Maetziger shaped almost half a century of German film history with his films. Maetzig was born on January 25, 1911 in Berlin. He learned the film trade in his father's copy shop and in his own animation studio. In 1937 the Nazis withdrew his work permit because his mother was Jewish. Maetzig joined the KPD in 1944, and after the Second World War the heavily propagandistic newsreel "Der Augenzeuge" was created under his direction.
Maetzig lays the foundation for DEFA
In May 1946 Maetzig became license holder, artistic director and head of DEFA, which later became the state film production company in the GDR. His first film "Ehe im Schatten" was released in cinemas in 1947 and was awarded the first Bambi as the most successful film of the year. According to the DEFA Foundation, it was the first German post-war film that dealt with anti-Semitism and received worldwide attention. This was followed by works such as "Die Buntkarierte" (1949), which was the first East German entry to take part in the Cannes Film Festival, and "Der Rat der Götter" (1959). According to the Potsdam Film Museum, Maetzig's works reflected the light and dark sides of East German cinema. His film "I Am the Rabbit" was banned in the GDR until 1990.
Many award-winning works
Director Kurt Maetzig in 2001 together with actress Eva Maria Hagen, who acted in several of his films.In total, Maetzig shot around 20 feature films and several documentaries. Five of them, including two about the communist leader Ernst Thälmann, were awarded the National Prize of the GDR. As the founding rector, the director launched the German Academy of Film Arts in Potsdam-Babelsberg. He himself taught there as a professor for film directing until 1964.
"The Big One of German Film"
Brandenburg's Prime Minister at the time, Matthias Platzeck (SPD), praised the director after his death as a "great giant of German film". He contributed to turning the film location Babelsberg into a myth. As a co-founder of DEFA and the Babelsberg Film School, he and others laid the foundation for institutions "whose names are still important today."