Wolfgang Staudte
Wolfgang Staudte is best known for his classic postwar film Die Mörder sind unter uns (1945). An award in his name is presented annually to German filmmakers for feature length films. In his own work, deeply affected by the Second World War, he consistently focused on the limitations of national pride.
Staudte was born into show business in 1906, with the actors Fritz Staudte and Mathilde Firmans as parents. He got his start with his father’s leftist Theatre company. Staudte worked in radio for a children’s program during the earliest years of his career. He acted and played a part in the notorious Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß (1940), but really enjoyed directing. It is said that he reached the high point of his career in the years immediately following the war.
Personal experiences motivated him to begin writing his script for Die Mörder sind unter uns during the final weeks of the war. Considering the Nazis were still in power, writing a script like this was a dangerous exercise which could have cost him his life. After the war, the script was rejected by American occupying forces, but accepted by the Soviets.
The film, Die Mörder sind unter uns was the first feature film of what would become a long relationship for Staudte with the Soviet occupying forces in East Germany and the Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA). As the first feature film produced in Germany after the war, Die Mörder sind unter uns took a analytical look at the impact of the holocaust and Nazi war crimes on the citizens of Germany. The tone of this film and many of his films to come was critical of political apathy.
Staudte left the DEFA and East Germany in 1955 because of a difference in opinion over the control of one of his films, Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder. He became a prolific director with the GDR’s Academy of the Arts and fell in love with the actress Ingmar Zeisberg. They were engaged in 1958 and married six years later. Over the course of their engagement, he made six more feature films, including Rosen für den Staatsanwalt (1959). Rosen took analyzed the shifts in the politics of Germany in relation to its National Socialist past and reaffirmed Staudte’s role as a director who thought critically about the world around him.
Yet, Staudte’s politics tended to take long looks at the past and his style of film was not keeping up with the changes in New German Cinema. Towards the end of the 1960s, Staudte began working in television, filming a couple of crime series and the made-for-T.V. adventure films Der Seewolf (1971) and Lockruf des Goldes (1975).
He died in 1984, while working on the television drama Der eiserne Weg.
See Also
Hoff, Peter & Wolfgang Mühl-Benninghaus. “Depictions of America in GDR television films and plays, 1955-1965.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 24.3 (August 2004): 403 – 410.
Shandley, Robert R. “Rubble Canyons: Die Mörder sind unter uns and the Western.” The German Quarterly 74. 2 (Spring, 2001): 132-147.
Shandley, Robert R. “Dismantling the Dream Factory: The Film Industry in Berubbled Germany.” South Central Review. 16.2/3 German Studies Today (Summer, 1999): 104-117.