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A History of Ufa and Babelsberg: Part 2

The failure of a cooperative film distribution deal in 1925 among Paramount, Ufa, and Metro-Goldwyn, the so-called Parufamet agreement, did not help matters. Neither did expensive productions like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with its 5.3 million-mark budget, an enormous sum in those days.

Babelsberg entrance
The entrance to Studio Babelsberg as it looks today. PHOTO: Wikimedia.org

To prevent its total financial collapse, Ufa was taken over in March 1927 by Alfred Hugenberg’s Deulig media empire. Hugenberg, an opponent of the democratic Weimar Republic, with Krupp connections, and a member of the right-wing German National People's Party, was motivated by a desire to use Ufa for his own political purposes. This Hugenberg connection would later make it easier for the Nazis to gain control of Ufa in the 1930s. Under the continuing management of Ludwig Kitzsch, Ufa soon controlled 133 domestic and foreign companies in film production, distribution, or display.

The Nazi era
The history of Ufa following the Nazi rise to power is a tragic one. After 1933, Ufa came under increasing state control and in 1937 the studio was once again state-owned. Many of the talented filmmakers in Germany who had not already departed did so in the early 1930s. Lubitsch had left for Hollywood in 1922, Paul Leni and F.W. Murnau in the mid-1920s, the actress Pola Negri and the actor Conrad Veidt around the same time. Even Erich Pommer, the head of Ufa since 1921, left for the greener films of Hollywood in 1926. (He returned to Germany in 1928, only to leave again because of the Nazis.)

An ever-increasing talent drain began as the Third Reich made it clear that “non-Aryans” were unwelcome in Germany’s film industry. Fritz Lang left in 1933 not long after his new film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, was banned by the new Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels. Soon a flood of cinema exiles poured into England, France and other neighboring countries, many to end up in Hollywood sooner or later.

    Also see:
  • An Ufa Chronology (1891-pres.) - A historical timeline that includes world cinema and other German studios.
  • The Berlinale - The Berlin International Film Festial

As the Nazis consolidated their power, Ufa—a vital tool for promoting government views—came increasingly under state control. By 1937 the Third Reich, through cover corporations and secret dealings, owned 72 percent of Ufa. By 1942, in the middle of wartime, Ufa was totally government owned and controlled; there were no private film production companies in Germany at all. Some film historians point out that not all films and filmmakers during the Nazi era complied entirely with Nazi guidelines. In fact, Goebbels was forced at various times to remind the German film community that he was the judge of what a “good” film was, and both he and Hitler found it necessary to ban some two dozen films in the 12 years of the Third Reich. Of the 1,094 feature films produced during that time, only about 14 percent are considered to be pure propaganda. About half of the movies of the time were innocuous comedies. Nevertheless, any German cinematic production from this time is tainted with Nazi brown.

Popular Ufa stars of the time, such as Hans Albers, the Swedish Zarah Leander, and Heinz Rühmann, had to bear the Nazi stigma after the war until their deaths, and few of the Nazi-era films can be regarded as classics in any light. Even the elaborate Agfacolor productions such as Münchhausen (1943), intended by Goebbels to show that Germany could equal colorful Hollywood epics like Gone With the Wind (a copy of which the German navy had obtained for Goebbels’ private viewing), do not hold up today. Ironically, the pure propaganda films of Hitler’s favorite director, Leni Riefenstahl, are, at least cinematically, among the best work of the period. As much as one may disagree with her allegiances, Riefenstahl’s directorial talents can not be denied.

The Reader
Kate Winslet and David Kross in The Reader, filmed on location in Germany and at Studio Babelsberg. PHOTO: Studio Babelsberg AG

The GDR era
After the war, Ufa ceased to exist. The division of Germany in 1949 meant that Ufa’s former facilities in Babelsberg came under the control of DEFA, the new East German film studio. West German film production came to be concentrated in Munich (Geiselgasteig), which had been a secondary player in film production before the war.

The once-mighty Ufa that had begun life in 1917 as an instrument of propaganda for the German army ended life in 1945—again an instrument of propaganda for the German army. Ufa’s rise and fall is a tragedy as sad and moving as any film tragedy could be. There is no happy ending. In 1956 Ufa arose again briefly, but only as a dim shadow of the pre-war conglomerate. Today the brand name “Ufa” simply identifies an entertainment distribution company that also produces some television programming. The Ufa label can be seen on DVDs in Europe (Ufa International), but the great movie studio and media empire once known as Ufa is no more.

The empire may be gone, but the Babelsberg studios, once Ufa’s main location, still survive. You can even take a tour of the facilities, located just outside Berlin next to Potsdam. Today the Studio Babelsberg, as it is now called, is home primarily to television and interactive media production. The French firm Vivendi bought Babelsberg in 1992. German film director Volker Schlöndorff headed an effort to turn the former Ufa and DEFA studios into an important post-Wall center of entertainment production.

In 2004 Vivendi sold all of its interest in Studio Babelsberg to two private investors. Over the last decade, Babelsberg has become a successful location for the production of Hollywood and international motion pictures, including Enemy at the Gates (2001), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Reader (2008), Valkyrie (2008), Inglourious Basterds (2009), The Ghost Writer (2010) and Hanna (2011). For more about Babelsberg today, see the Web links below.

NEXT > An Ufa Chronology

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